Today’s world of devices connected to clouds looks set to evolve with more intelligence and processing being pushed to the edge or migrating between the cloud and the edge. The very definition of edge is evolving too. In this presentation we will look at some potential futures made possible by the emergence of the fog and its implications for the segments that it embraces.
Mark Hambleton / ARM
Approaching 20 years of experience in embedded systems ranging from real time control of wind tunnels in his early career to a more recently on mobile devices. Mark has been working with the Linux kernel for approaching 15 years, initially creating networking products focussing on traffic classification and shaping for core and edge routers to more recently on mobile devices. Working as a Chief Architect for at Symbian (and Nokia), Mark established himself within the ARM community, he then joined Broadcom in 2012 to refocus on Linux on ARM working on their leading edge mobile SOCs and then on to ARM in 2014.
Toradex also showcased its demo showcasing its new Apalis iMX8 SoM running Qt 3D Studio – the SoM based on NXP’s i.MX 8QuadMax processor. The Apalis iMX8QM offers one click OS installation via the Toradex Easy Installer and offers dual Arm Cortex-A72, quad Arm Cortex-A53, and dual Arm Cortex-M4. The Apalis iMX8QM also contains on-board dual-band 802.11ac 2×2 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi and is Bluetooth 5 ready. This SoM offers advanced hardware security and safety features, and is ideal for signal processing, computer vision and HMI applications. You can sign up for early access for the Apalis iMX8QM here.
HiSilicon and Hoperun introduces their new HiKey 970 development board, 10nm HiSilicon Kirin 970 based (same chipset that is in the recent Huawei Mate 10) quad ARM Cortex-A73 at 2.36GHz with quad ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.8GHz with Mali-G72MP12 and their new Dedicated Neural-network Processing Unit (NPU) with 256MAC/cycle @ 960MHz performance. To be available next month for $299 on Amazon and at http://hihope.org this is their Super Edge AI Computing Platform with Huawei HiAI SDK that can provide up to 25X Performance and 50X better Power Efficiency compared with doing the AI tasks by CPU or GPU. This enables the Heterogeneous multi processing Resource Management for use in applications such as Deep Learning, Robots, Automobile, Smart City. The NPU provides frequently used artificial intelligence function APIs, model management APIs and basic operator computing APIs, so developers can focus on developing new AI applications instead of focusing on performance tuning. The HiKey970’s dedicated AI processor has a rich set of imaging and I/Os that enables developers to build highly integrated flexible products for AI-based intelligent cameras in smart cities.
Features include:
UEFI + ARM Trusted Firmware
Kernel 4.9
CAN driver
CSI/CSI-2 driver
WiFi enable
Video Codec enable
PCIe enable for storage and LTE connect
4 lanes CSI + 2 lanes CSI
CAN V2.0B up to 1Mbps
Video Dec up to H.265 3840×2160@60fps
6GB 1866MHz, 4 Channel LPDDR4x
GPS, GLONASS, and BeiDou
Planet Computers CTO Davide Guidi, filmed at the Gemini PDA headquarters in London, they shipped to first 1000 backers of 4200 from their successful Indiegogo. Here presenting 5 Linux distros, unlocked bootloader, open source on their website (with more source code to come shortly to that page) hardware acceleration of any Linux distro is under development using Libhybris and planning to try to integrate Halium to optimize the performance in all Linux distributions, to use the Android GPU, sound, video, modem and other binaries to each their fullest hopefully within each Linux distro. Gemini PDA hopes that by unlocking their bootloader, by providing the bootloader open source, providing their Linux distro images open source, letting users do whatever they want and multi-booth any OS that they would like, hopefully there will be a vibrant community to bring great all Linux performance on this MediaTek X27 deca-core Powered large and awesome mechanical keyboard phone. After having soon shipped to their remaining Indiegogo backers, Planet Computers hopes to be able to expand much further selling their phone through distributors and telcos around the world.
Tianma claims to be the market leader in worldwide LTPS and Full Active LCD Shipments in Q4 2017, here demonstrating some of their newest displays such as their 5.46″ Flexible HD AMOLED display. 5.5″ FHD Foldable AMOLED. Low cost 5.96″ HD+ a-Si Full Active LCD with rounded corners and a Notch. 6.18″ FHD LTPS Notch LCD. 15.6″ 4K Quantum Dot Laptop display such as the 3K by 2K LTPS bezel-less Laptop display that is in the newly launched Huawei Matebook X Pro supplied by Tianma. 5.93″ Full Active LCD. Force Touch.
E Ink shows and talks about its latest innovations in consumer electronics, architecture, healthcare, retail and fashion at CES 2018, to bring dynamic elements to generally static environments such as architecture and design, as well as discuss how its ePaper technology is being integrated into smart cities and connected devices, famous for eReaders, also revolutionizing the digital signage, healthcare and retail industries as well. Bus signs, electronic shelf labels, medical devices, products featured include the E Ink DAZZLE wall, the world’s largest media façade on the San Diego International Airport parking garage, featuring 2,100 tiles of E Ink’s Prism technology. A dress designed by Bergmeyer featuring E Ink Prism which won Best in Show at IIDA Fashion Show in October, 2017. A reconfigurable Retail Price Tag, a thin, batteryless price tag containing Powercast’s power harvesting technology that enables quick price changes using a typical handheld UHF RFID reader for wirelessly updating the display, the LTS Smart Patch transdermal therapeutic system that delivers medication to patients in a convenient and controlled manner, ReMarkable E Ink tablet offering paper-like reading, pen input writing and sketching, Onyx Boox Note, Onyx Boox Max2 (which I filmed here), Sony Digital Paper and more.
NXP launches the i.MX 8M Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 with ARM Cortex-M4 for audio (pro audio fidelity with more than 20 audio channels each @384KHz and DSD512 audio), voice and video (4K with HDR (Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG)), fully supported on NXP’s 10 and 15-year Longevity Program. At Embedded World 2018, NXP partnered with 8 development board providers who all launched their boards with i.MX8M support.
NXP also announced their new i.MX 8M Mini, their first embedded multi-core heterogeneous applications processors built using advanced 14LPC FinFET process technology. The i.MX 8M Mini family of processors features up to four Arm Cortex-A53 cores running at up to 2GHz and an ARM Cortex-M4 based real-time processing domain at 400+MHz.
wolfSSL is a commercial grade TLS library available in open-source GPL form on GitHub (http://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl) written in C and designed for Embedded use because its modular design. They provide build-time options for enabling and disabling all algorithms and TLS features. They support progressive algorithms such as Ed25519/Curve25519, ChaCha20/Poly1035 and SHA-3 using TLS 1.2/TLS 1.3. The part used for the demo is an STM32F777ZI. They are going to add support for ARMv8-M TrustZone-M hardware security when chipsets become available in the near future.
Bero (Bernhard Rosenkränzer) from the Linaro Mobile Group who I have interviewed many times in the past, see my playlist with all his videos here. Bero is at Embedded World 2018 to look for parts so he can build an even better ARM Powered Laptop.
Interview with founders of QuirkLogic, Nashir Samanani and Mike Mabey. Their product, the Quilla is a Real Time Ideation solution which is aimed at replacing traditional ways of brainstorming and capturing ideas. During the interview they explained that the Quilla is shipping in volume, the types of markets include Technology, Healthcare, Design, Architecture & Construction, Hospitality etc. Quilla features a 42” ePaper display, its so low power that they can run it on battery for 16 hours and the whole thing weighs only 24 lbs making it quite portable. Here showing how it looks in direct sunlight, with no glare, the writing experience feels like paper and pen but it has full digital capabilities including file sharing, pen and touch inputs, image modifications with two finger pinch and zoom, unlimited pages, walk up and use features. Their target is for every conference room, sports locker room, nurses’ station in a hospital, construction sites that modify blue prints constantly etc can benefit from this technology. The QuirkLogic team of Zemina, Mac and Matt also demo their Ideation solution, the Quilla, in this video they show the collaboration features in real time, the ability for remote teams to work together and brainstorm, work on projects and design things and ideas collaboratively in settings that can be more inspirational without the need to be indoor.
Nubia’s flagship phone is their Z17S with a 5.73″ FHD+ screen 2040*1080 Pixel display (403ppi), 4G LTE Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 6GB RAM, 64GB Flash, Four Cameras, Android 7.1, NFC, Type-C 26W fast Charge. Nubia also does smart locks, IoT, smart lamps and more. The N Series and V Series are going to be price attractively yet provide a 18:9 display. As concepts for future phones they are showing one with a built-in fan for gamers to cool their phone when cranking up the peak performance output and designs for gamers that includes kevlar. Noise canceling headphones, power banks, 360 degree Type-C camera and more.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 is Qualcomm’s fastest consumer ARM Processor yet (30-40% faster than last year’s Snapdragon 835 using 30% less power), on 10nm FinFET LPP Samsung process, it features 64bit Octa-core quad 2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold which are ARM Cortex-A75 custom cores and quad 1.8 GHz Kryo 385 Silver which are ARM Cortex-A55 custom cores, Qualcomm’s fastest ever GPU the Adreno 630 with its Visual Processing Subsystem (including GPU, VPU and DPU) with OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan2, DxNext eXtended Reality (XR), Room-Scale 6DoF with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), Adreno Foveation, Advanced visual inertial odometry (VIO), HDR10 and Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), 4K Ultra HD @ 60 FPS, 2x 2400×2400 @ 120 FPS (VR), 10-bit color depth (encoding and decoding). Qualcomm’s AI Platform is on their 3rd Generation Qualcomm Hexagon 685 DSP which supports sophisticated, on-device AI processing, delivering richer camera, voice, XR and gaming experiences as a Neural Processing Engine (NPE) with Caffe, Caffe2 and TensorFlow support. With DisplayPort and USB Type-C support. Qualcomm’s X20 Modem supports 1.2Gbit/s download speed using 5×20 MHz carrier aggregation, up to 256-QAM, up to 4×4 MIMO on three carriers, up to 150mbit/s upload speed using 2×20 MHz carrier aggregation, up to 64-QAM. Multi-gigabit Wi-Fi 802.11ad and integrated 2×2 802.11ac. Qualcomm Secure Processing Unit (SPU) where Biometrics can be used for authentication can be stored in isolation in hardware.
ST Microelectronics Booth Tour at Embedded World 2018 featuring their major new product announcements (STM32WB, STM32C2C and ST25DVW), featuring ST partners in the ST fanzone with Photon with ToF (Time-of-flight), Conrad robotics, Style spinner, universities and research organisations that ST collaborates with: the CEA-leti for self-flying drones (360 sensor fusion), INSA from Toulouse France for some gameboy projects to teach students about system integration, software defined instrumentation with the CTU university from Prague.
STM32WB is a dual-core MCU with wireless support based on an Arm Cortex‐M4 core running at 64 MHz (application processor) and an Arm Cortex‐M0+ core at 32 MHz (network processor). With two totally independent cores, this innovative architecture is optimized for real‑time execution (radio‑related software processing), resource use flexibility, power management, and a low BOM cost, to bring better user experience. The STM32WB platform is an evolution of the well‐known market-leading STM32L4 ultra‑low‑power series of MCUs. It provides the same digital and analog peripherals suitable for applications requiring extended battery life and complex functionalities. STM32WB proposes a variety of communication assets, a practical crystal-less USB2.0 FS interface, audio support, an LCD driver, up to 72 GPIOs, an integrated SMPS for power consumption optimization, and multiple low-power modes to maximize battery life. On top of wireless and ultra‐low‐power aspects, a particular focus was placed on embedding security hardware functions such as a 256‐bit AES, PCROP, JTAG Fuse, PKA (elliptic curve encryption engine), and Root Secure Services (RSS). The RSS allows authenticating OTA communications, regardless of the radio stack or application.
The STM32WB55 Bluetooth 5 -certified device offers Mesh 1.0 software support, multiple profiles and flexibility to integrate proprietary BLE stacks.
ST25DV-W series of dynamic NFC/RFID tags offers a 13.56 MHz long-range interface compatible with NFC phones and readers. Based on an ISO/IEC 15693 and NFC Forum Type 5 tag, ST25DV tag ICs can be operated from an RFID reader or an NFC phone. They also include an I²C interface that lets them connect to a host (MCU, MPU, etc.). These tags feature an innovative fast transfer mode between an embedded host and an NFC phone or reader thanks to their half-duplex 256-byte buffer. ST25DV dynamic NFC/RFID tags can be used in a wide variety of applications including consumer electronics, industrial, metering, electronic shelf labels, IoT objects and more.
STM32C2C P-L496G-CELL01 STM32 discovery pack for 2G/3G cellular to cloud (STM32-C2C/2G-3G) is a turnkey development platform for cellular and cloud technology based solutions. The pack is composed of an STM32L496AGI6-based low-power discovery mother board with preloaded firmware, and an STMod+ cellular expansion board with antenna. The P-L496G-CELL02 discovery pack for LTE IoT cellular to cloud (STM32-C2C/LTE IoT) is a turnkey development platform for cellular and cloud technology based solutions. The pack is composed of an STM32L496AGI6-based low-power discovery mother board with preloaded firmware, and an STMod+ cellular expansion board with antenna.
This is Epson’s best ultra short throw interactive FHD projector, generating up to a 100″ laser display at Full HD WUXGA resolution with Epson’s 0.67 inch with MLA (D10) 3LCD technology at 4000lumen, 2,500,000:1 Contrast Ratio, 20,000 Hours Durability.
Paul Gray is a Principal Analyst/Researcher within the IHS Technology group since November 2014, when IHS acquired DisplaySearch, a leader in primary research and forecasting on the global display market. At DisplaySearch, he served as director of European research. In addition to TVs, he also covered wearable devices, digital broadcast and semiconductor technology. He conducted in-depth analysis and forecasting of wearable devices, connected TV and 4K Ultra HD. Mr. Gray has more than 20 years of experience in market intelligence, marketing and product management. His work includes forecasting, product strategy, investment and R&D decisions. He has also been involved in consulting and conferences, and he has been cited as an expert in Nikkei, Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Financial Times, The Korea Herald and other publications.
The Zephyr Project is a scalable real-time operating system (RTOS) supporting multiple hardware architectures with more than 82 development boards supported already, with additional hardware support being added regularly, optimized for resource constrained devices, and built with security in mind. The Zephyr Project wants to be the open source “Linux of Embedded”. Zephyr Project members include Linaro and the Open Source Foundries, Intel, NXP, Synopsys, Nordic Semiconductor, DeviceTone, runtime.io, Texas Instruments, Oticon and more. This video features functional prototype devices using the Zephyr kernel, including a functional Bluetooth Mesh network, a low energy Bluetooth controller, and an OpenThread demo. Other demos include the World’s first Bluetooth 5.0 qualified, open source low energy Bluetooth Controller that features open source code from Application to Radio, a BlueZ Bluetooth Host stack, a Zephyr kernel, low energy link layer, OS Host Controller Interface, the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52, and the Arm Cortex M4F + Bluetooth 5 and Radio SoC. This demo will take a closer look at the different layers that make up a full BLE protocol stack helps explain this capability. Bluetooth Mesh in action on BBC micro:bit boards available since Zephyr OS v1.9 showcases the many-to-many BLE communication, how every node can be a relay and the user interface. A functional Bluetooth Mesh Network with Lightweight Machine to Machine Device Management showcases the Cloud Device Management System using Linux-based IoT gateways and Zephyr-based IoT devices for real-world project prototypes and smart objects. A demonstration of OpenThread integration, benefits from the Zephyr infrastructure and how it works with Nordic nRF52840 and OpenThread 6loWPAN Thread Stack. The flow of IP traffic is handled seamlessly by both the Zephyr native IP stack and OpenThread: 802.15.4 traffic received by radio driver is forwarded to the OpenThread stack, where it is processed by the 802.15.4 MAC, 6loWPAN and IPv6 layers implemented in OpenThread.
Reinhard Keil, Senior Director Embedded Tools, Arm talks about the Arm Keil MDK which is a complete development environment and supports over 5000 microcontrollers. At Embedded World, Arm introduced the TrustZone-M firmware project for security and a runtime software system for safety applications that accelerates software development for Cortex-M press release The certification enables the use of the runtime system in projects that run on Arm Cortex-M0, Cortex-M0+, Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M7, and target certification according to ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 up to ASIL D and SIL 3, respectively. Certification for Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 is planned for 2019.
Karim Yaghmour at Embedded World in Nuremberg, he is most widely known as the author of O’Reilly’s “Embedded Android” and “Building Embedded Linux Systems” books. He talks about a wide-range of topics including Android’s Project Treble, Android Things and Embedded Android in general. Karim will be holding a live session on Android’s Project Treble on YouTube on March 27th (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XJAdK9XKcQ) and another one on the HIDL mechanism introduced as part of Treble on March 28th (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFaWqdxBW4E) you can click on these to set a reminder so that you can watch them live and later on demand.
Jack Ogawa, Senior Director of Marketing, MCU at Cypress Semiconductor talks PSoC 6 and arm PSA at Embedded World 2018, PSoC 6 MCUs now support the highest level of security as defined by the Arm Platform Security Architecture (PSA). In the interview, Jack discusses the three levels of hardware-based isolation for securing connecting devices. Cypress also gave a cool demo illustrating how a LoRaWAN edge node can be secured with a PSoC 6 MCU.
PSoC 6 is purpose built for the Internet of Things, enabling easy integration of sensing, processing, connectivity and security functions all in a low-power MCU. Integrating secure element functionality with on-chip hardware accelerated cryptography, PSoC 6 MCUs enable designers to easily implement security in a single chip without needing an external secure element device. For more information you can check out the announcement here and here.
