Front End I News
Barr Group’s 2018 Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey reveals little movement toward safer product development
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arr Group, The Embedded Systems Experts, has released the latest findings from its 2018 Embedded Systems Safety & Security Survey
regarding the state of embedded systems safety. Preliminary results show that only one in four safety- critical device developers are following all industry- recommended software development best practices for increasing safety. Overall there has also been little progress in the last three years in tightening design processes to improve the safety of devices that can kill or injure. With nearly 30 per cent of embedded systems designers creating devices that can potentially harm end users in the event of malfunction, this lack of improvement is a major concern for the industry. Completed by more than 1,700 qualified professional designers of embedded systems, the survey assesses the state of product development practices of engineers from around the world (46 per cent from North America, 33 per cent from Europe, and 10 per cent from Asia). While there have been some wins across the embedded systems industry overall — such as greater numbers of developers of internet-connected devices including security as a product design requirement and an increase in automating the enforcement of some coding standard rules — there has been no apparent progress in the specific area of safety-critical devices. “This year’s survey confirms that products in development have become increasingly complex, for example, having more microprocessors aboard, which opens the door wider to opportunities for product malfunction,” said Barr Group CTO Michael Barr. “It is disheartening to see that many designers of safety- critical systems continue to skip software development steps that are known to reduce the number of bugs and unplanned behaviours in embedded systems.” Of the industry-recommended design practices highlighted in the survey, the following statistics are of greatest concern: 43 per cent don’t do regular code reviews; 41 per cent don’t perform regression testing; 38 per cent don’t comply with any safety standard; 33 per cent don’t use a static analysis tool; 17 per cent don’t follow any coding standard. “Of safety-critical embedded products currently in development, two out of three target the medical, industrial, automotive, and defence/aerospace industries,” Barr pointed out. “Moving forward, we hope that more developers will follow design practices known to be effective in maximising the safety of end users.”
The full analysis report is available for download at
https://barrgroup.com/embedded- systems/surveys/2018.
Xilinx CEO outlines new vision, strategy for the company V
ictor Peng, the president and CEO of Xilinx, Inc., the leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, has unveiled his vision and strategy for the company. Designed to deliver new growth, technology and direction for Xilinx, Peng’s vision is to enable the “adaptable, intelligent world”. In this world, Xilinx moves beyond the FPGA to deliver a completely new category of highly flexible and adaptive processors and platforms that will allow for rapid innovation across a wide array of technologies –from the endpoint to the edge to the cloud. Peng’s strategy involves three key points: • New emphasis on data centre acceleration: Xilinx is ramping up its efforts with key data center customers, ecosystem partners and software application developers, to further enable innovation and deployments in compute acceleration, computational storage and network acceleration. Data centre is an area of rapid technology adoption where customers can quickly take advantage of the orders of magnitude performance and performance per-watt improvement that Xilinx technology enables in applications like artificial intelligence (AI) inference, video
www.cieonline.co.uk
and image processing, and genomics. • Accelerating growth in core markets: These markets are areas where Xilinx has been a key technology leader and has deep market traction. They include: automotive; wireless infrastructure; wired communications; audio, video and broadcast; aerospace and defence; industrial, scientific and medical; test, measurement and emulation; and consumer technologies. These core markets and customers remain central to Xilinx and the company will continue to enable innovation to these areas. • Introducing the Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform (ACAP): The third and most significant pillar is the announcement of this new breakthrough product. An ACAP is a highly integrated multi-core heterogeneous compute platform that can be changed at the hardware level to adapt to the needs of a wide range of applications and workloads. An ACAP’s adaptability, which can be done dynamically in milliseconds during operation, delivers levels of performance and performance per-watt that is unmatched by CPUs or GPUs.
www.xilinx.com
Going for a record: embedded world continues to grow!
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ow in its 16th year, embedded world has once again impressively demonstrated that there is a good reason why it is known as the leading exhibition for the international embedded community. It was larger again in 2018, with more trade visitors, more space and more exhibitors. 1,021 (+1 per cent) companies from around the world, occupying six exhibition halls, showed more than 32,217 (+7.3 per cent) embedded experts from 78 countries where the journey in the Internet of Things and the increasingly digitalised world is leading. But the latest developments encompassed more than just the exhibition halls: the embedded world Conference and electronic displays Conference also enjoyed record participation, with 2,176 participants and speakers from 52 countries, and impressed the experts with their first-class, high-quality professional programmes. This was also the 14th time that the embedded award has been presented for innovative and visionary products. “We are very pleased to have broken the 1,000- exhibitor barrier again this year, with 1,021 companies from 38 countries exhibiting at embedded world,” says Richard Krowoza from the NürnbergMesse management team. “That is our best participation figure to date. And we can still see huge potential. embedded world has been experiencing massive development, which cannot be taken for granted in the trade fair sector.
For its 16th edition, it has shown continued growth in the key parameters of visitor and exhibitor numbers and exhibition space. The power of innovation shown by the engineers; digitalisation, which, like the Internet of Things, would be impossible without embedded technologies; the two conferences; and the continued demand from a global market are the motors driving the industry.”
Happy exhibitors and trade visitors This year, too, embedded world succeeded in impressing its community. Before the event was even over, 97 per cent of the trade visitors said they would take part again in 2019. 96 per cent were happy with embedded world. The exhibiting companies take an equally positive view: 95 per cent say they will exhibit again in 2019, just as many reached their target groups, and 9 of 10 expect post-show business.
Passing on the baton Towards the end of this year’s embedded world, Prof. Matthias Sturm, driver and visionary behind the embedded events, stepped down from his position as Chair of the Exhibition Advisory Board and Conference Chair after 16 years. Prof. Axel Sikora will take over his exhibition and conference duties.
www.embedded-world.de/en Components in Electronics March 2018 7
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