Front End I Embedded World report Can I take your order?
Standardisation versus customisation was the debate ringing through the halls at Embedded World in Nuremberg. Steve Rogerson reports for CIE
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here was a certain irony at this year’s Embedded World in Nuremberg that while much of the buzz was about the launch of a new European-based standards body – the Standardisation Group for Embedded Technologies (SGet) – the talk around the halls was more of how customisation and design to order had become a dominant part of many companies’ businesses.
SGet is attempting to become a
European equivalent to Picmg or Vita but with the aim of turning concepts into standards at a much faster pace. The group has a number of board and module makers already on board, but has been criticised for wanting to create even more standards in a field already overflowing and in which customisation is becoming more popular.
post-manufacturing. It provides system- integration options and its range includes displays, industrial computing platforms, storage and software with servers, standard and custom board designs, and systems, among others. The company has seven integration facilities worldwide. “We have brought things together to act as a value-added integrator,” said Apel. “We are focusing on the OEM and appliance markets.” Facchi added: “We are trying to add value. That is the challenge we have to face and we are ready to face it.” Masaki Kakizaki, deputy manager for TFT marketing at Japanese company Mitsubishi Electric, said that he was using a two-tiered approach to selling displays in Europe with value-added resellers and premium distributors. While some VARs will be able to help customers with design work, premium distributor status was for those more willing to be involved early in the design cycle.
“These distributors will help customer design teams to reduce time to market without having to employ new specialists,” said Kakizaki. “They are total solution providers for the market.’ He said that the premium distributors
Volkmar Kaufmann: “Our primary focus is to help customers tailor our platforms.”
“Our primary focus is to help customers tailor our platforms to their needs,” said Volkmar Kaufmann, sales team manager at Taiwanese board maker Aaeon, one of the companies not involved with the group. “That is our primary core competency.” Another company that has moved into the design space is Arrow Electronics. The distributor was once known primarily as a source for components but now sees itself as a firm that combines different offerings to provide more complete products for the embedded market.
“Our customer base used to be driven by the component space,” said Paolo Facchi, EMEA marketing and asset director. “We want to continue with that but expand to different customers looking not for components but for a specific set of embedded systems.” And the company’s Achim Apel, director and general manager for OEM computing, added: “We are going up in the food chain and it is more complex. We are trying to reduce the complexity by offering a broader profile of solutions and not just parts.” Arrow’s embedded computing integration services for OEMs include end- to-end designs, design engineering, supply- chain management, global logistics and
6 March 2012
were chosen for having more capability to supports customers than the VARs but was quick to stress that the VARS were still very active in the market. “The premium distributors can guide the customers to make more use of the TFTs,” he said. “They will do design work for the customer. Not all VARs have the ability to do that.”
and business development. “We don’t focus on repair and maintenance because we don’t hold a large number of obsolete products. We focus on new products. We don’t want them to take a product in a design and for it to be obsolete by the time the product comes to market. That is why we only have the latest technology.” He said that the company’s expertise was in the product concept and design area.
Robotics: Texas Instruments (TI) and iRobot, a leading company in robotic technology-based solutions, have announced a partnership to develop robotic technologies using TI’s smart multicore OMAP platform. The relationship stems from the
companies’ shared aim to create intelligent and practical robots. The two companies are looking to leverage iRobot’s long history in advancing the field of robotics and TI’s strength in applications processors and related technologies.
Agreement: Molex Incorporated and TE Connectivity have announced second source agreements under which TE will have the right to manufacture, market and sell worldwide several Molex high-speed interconnect solutions including the z-Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable Plus (zQSFP+) and the Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus (zSFP+), among others. Molex will have the right to manufacture, market and sell worldwide TE Connectivity’s Quadra High-Speed I/O Connector. Both said that they will work jointly to deliver electrically and mechanically interchangeable products to the market as quickly as possible by sharing design and manufacturing processes.
John Carbone: “Things have started to improve.”
“We are there right at the beginning,” he said. “Others get involved at the breadboard stage. We want to have influence at the concept stage with the engineer. We have to make sure we are getting our products thought about right at the beginning not in the middle. This means we build a much stronger relationship with the engineer.” But he insisted that the company did not want to be involved in doing the work of the design engineer. “They don’t want us to,” he said. “They want us to provide information in the easiest way possible. We are not trying to do what they do. We just want to seed the market with products in a way the engineer can see what is available.” As to the amount of design work taking place in the industry, there was a general air of optimism among exhibitors and delegates and some had concrete examples.
One was RTOS company Express Logic, and its vice president of marketing John Carbone described 2011 as a “great year”. He said: “Things have started to
Masaki Kakizaki: “The premium distributors can guide the customers.”
Mouser, on the other hand, believes that
its growth in recent years – a staggering 225% in 2010 and 42% last year – is down to it concentrating on selling electronic components, which accounts for virtually all of its sales. But it does that by making sure that the designers know the name.
“Our target is the design and development engineer,” said Graham Maggs the company’s director of marketing
Components in Electronics
improve. This began at the end of 2010 and a lot of our partners and customers are seeing this big upturn.” He said that because Express Logic sells at the design stage he thought this was a good indicator of future increases as designs move to manufacture. “I am very optimistic this will continue with more of the same this year,” he said. This optimism was reflected in what
turned out to be a record-breaking show, with the most ever visitors – 22,262, up 17 per cent on last year – and the most exhibitors – 872, up nine per cent on 2011. “The Embedded World exhibition and
conference has shown once again that it is the top get-together for the embedded community,” said Matthias Sturm, chairman of the exhibition committee. “The rapid development in this sector is tangible at Embedded World.”
Service portfolio: Rittal, a system provider for enclosures, power distribution, climate control and IT infrastructures is offering a thermal analyses service for data centres. On average, approximately 18 percent of the energy costs occurring in data centres are consumed by cooling systems and an optimised climate control system can help cut energy costs.
According to Rittal data centre thermal analyses enables companies to identify and resolve defects in climate control systems and the functionality of the hardware and the energy efficiency of IT infrastructures are determined, to a large extent, by the temperature in the server rack and/or data centre.
New blog: CamSemi has launched a new Standards Time blog for power supply designers in the consumer electronics sector who need to keep
updated with all the latest efficiency, EMI and other technical performance standards affecting their designs. The company’s ‘Standards Time’ blog - at
www.camsemi.com/standards-time-blog - has been created to highlight the latest proposed changes to mandatory and voluntary regulations for power supplies and solid-state lighting products. Designers can now visit one single online source for an overview spanning all the major organisations.
Media tablets: New research suggests that by 2014 media tablets will become the world’s fourth- largest application for semiconductors, up from 35th in 2010, rising in just four short years from obscurity to a level rivalling the position of powerhouse chip markets like mobile handsets and PCs, according to IHS iSuppli. Sales of semiconductors for use in media tablets are expected to skyrocket to $18.2 billion in 2014, up from $2.6 billion in 2010, the year that Apple kicked off the market with the introduction of the iPad.
www.cieonline.co.uk
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