(This is a wrap up of my thoughts from day 1 of Embedded World 2017. For highlights from day 2, check out EW17 day 2 blog: All about automotive)
Guten tag from Nuremberg! The Embedded World conference and exhibition is upon us, with more than 300,000 people expected to attend over the three day event. I am sharing some of the trends and cool technology that I have seen from the show, but please feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments section below, as I am sure to miss some things.
ARM is showcasing how it is the foundation of connected intelligence at the event, with a wide array of talks at the conference and technology demonstrations on the ARM booth (Hall 3, Stand 342). Working with the ARM ecosystem, ARM’s embedded technology can be harnessed to improve the lives of everyone in invisible ways.
From the ARM booth: ARM technology will be at the heart of future smart cities
IoT and security were the words coming out of everybody’s mouth on day 1, which is only natural considering the heightened awareness by recent hacks and studies. Two weeks ago at MWC, SoftBank CEO Masa Son mentioned that one of his company’s engineers wanted to see how many security cameras he could hack before his wife returned from lunch. He hacked 1.2 million security cameras in a single lunchtime.
In a bid to share the security-focused thinking Rob Coombs gave a practical guide to securing embedded & IoT platforms for devices. The three attack vectors for IoT are via communication, software and hardware tampering, with each one presenting its own unique problems. The scalability of attacks via software and communication channels means they are a minimum requirement for avoiding mass hacking of IoT devices. However, given the nature of IoT where end nodes may often be left in the field for years without recall, resistance to hardware attacks is critical where the information stored on the device is valuable. ARM’s new portfolio of IoT technology is able to address each of these attack vectors to enable the design of a more secure IoT.
Security is always a balance between risk and cost
You can check out the rest of Rob’s presentation on Slideshare
While security is fast becoming a pre-requisite for embedded devices, the cost and complexity has proved to be an obstacle for others in the past. Addressing these challenges, Phil Burr explained how you can jump start your ARM-based IoT chip for free on the exhibitor’s forum.
There is a growing trend for companies to design their own SoC for these reasons
There are three key components to making the economics of SoC design worthwhile, which are: reusable IP and software, expert guidance on design, and a low cost entry to design. Get the rest of Phil’s presentation on Slideshare, or find out more at ARM DesignStart.
Meanwhile on the ARM booth there were people queueing up to Meet the Experts and get their technical questions answered. They are on the ARM booth to answer all of your technical questions, big or small, with different topics being covered each day, you can find out more about our Experts in this blog. There was strong interest around software development in ARMv8-M architecture in particular. While the resident ARM experts were fielding questions from all comers, on the Analog Devices stand there was a fun representation of a smart city based on increasingly intelligent embedded computing. And it had Lego, so what’s not to love?!
Let me know if I missed anything related to IoT security or if you saw something interesting yourself, with 5 halls the Embedded World exhibition is too large to see everything! Tomorrow I will share more updates of the show and the trends I have seen.
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EW17: Meet the Experts
EW17: Demos