What you missed at Embedded World

Once again Embedded world ends after a fantastic three days of the industry’s colleagues collaborating to provide 720 exhibitions from thirty-nine countries.

EPS Global members: CEO Colin Lynch, VP of Programming Richard Leech and FAE Joshua Willson attended the conference with the strong mindset to engage with partners and make plans to bring a complete offering of Secure Provisioning and Embedded Security.

The statement was clear: Security made Simple.

What did we see at Embedded World that you might have missed? Let’s dive in!

Renesas & Dialog

Like many partners, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a rapidly growing field for Renesas. Creating a custom solution of MCUs, connectivity, and sensors is often a more challenging task than is expected, and this is where Renesas’ Quick-Connect IoT platform comes in. This new platform promises to solve these issues by providing standard hardware and software building blocks to enable quick prototyping of IoT systems.
EPS Global provides secure provisioning for Renesas Synergy, RE, RA, RL78, and RX MCU families.

IAR/Secure Thingz

IAR Systems and Secure Thingz was busy for the duration of the show. It was remarkably interesting to see the team discuss their latest technology, such as new advancements in their ARM solutions and 64-bit support in their RISC-V solutions.

Secure Thingz security experts were also on hand and ready to discuss how to make security simple. The group would show the latest products for secure prototyping and deployment, as well as explain the collaboration with partners for secure supply chains.
EPS Global has partnered with Secure Thingz to bring high-volume secure provisioning to the IOT worldwide.

Hardware Security Module, Secure Thingz (an IAR Company)

Microchip

Off the back of the announcement from Microchip, the new RISC-V FPGAs were an exciting topic for EPS Global to chat to Microchip colleagues about. This new FPGA is the first RISC-V-based SoC to enter volume production and we cannot wait to get our hands on one. The new system has an extremely easy adoption route for products already based on PolarFire devices. With integration with the Mi-V ecosystem, a comprehensive suite of tools and design resources developed by Microchip and third parties, designers are able to go from prototype to production in a very short space of time. Microchip’s FPGAs are ideal for a wide range of applications across all sectors; from aerospace to IoT, from ADAS to industrial automation.
EPS Global is an authorized Microchip Design and Security Design Partner and distributor.

NXP

NXP Semiconductors presented advances across industrial, smart home and automotive applications. They also took home the hardware award for their Voice Intelligent Technology (VIT) which enables a voice-controlled user interface with always-on wake word detection and local commands.
EPS Global supports NXP Secure Elements and security enabled MCUs and MPUs.

Nordic

Nordic were thrilled to promote the low power cellular IoT, DECT NR+, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth LE Audio, Bluetooth mesh, Matter, and other device capabilities they had on the stand. The team were offering the latest demos and solutions and attendees were met with an interesting conversation.

We also got to hear Jussi Numminen (Wirepas), and Martin Lesund (Nordic Semiconductor) speak about the world's first non-cellular 5G technology, as well as Lesund speaking on a panel which discussed the embedded market's readiness for IoT enablement.

ST Microelectronics

ST Microelectronics discussed SFI with EPS Global and we were excited to hear about the overview on the secure firmware install technology they have on offer. EPS Global announced earlier this year that it can support STMicroelectronics’ secure firmware install (SFI) technology for their eligible STM32 microcontrollers for electronics manufacturers globally.

SFI promises to allow STM32 series devices support and protection mechanisms. These will permit the protection of critical operations (such as cryptography algorithms) and critical data (such as secret keys) against unexpected access.

The SFI process prevents the OEM firmware code from extraction or disclosed. During SFI process, the secure bootloader never allows any other code to access user Flash memory or SRAM.

Infineon

‘Smart’ seemed to be a big focus for Infineon, as did the security aspect around protecting consumer devices when we spoke to them. Be it smart home & smart building, smart mobility or smart factories, Infineon are looking to empower the residential, industrial, and automotive spaces with semiconductors. The booth itself felt very interactive, where we saw a toy Bugatti being “assembled” by a smart assembly arm, various battery management and sensing applications, and even a huge birthday cake celebrating 20 years of Psoc6.

Crypto Quantique

Meeting with Crypto-Quantique, one of EPS Global’s security ecosystem partners, we got to learn even more about QuarkLink, the exciting software-based IoT security platform. A cloud-based security solution for consumer devices that uses advanced cryptography techniques and almost completely eliminates any complexity required from OEM designers. Their approach of zero-touch, zero-fuss proposes an automated process, which means no manual intervention or complex security workarounds. The team demonstrated how managing devices through an intuitive interface makes it easy for OEMs to oversee security themselves.
Crypto Quantique and EPS Global have partnered to offer their joint customers Secure Programming using the Crypto Quantique solution on our proprietary-designed programmers at our programming facilities all around the world.

Macronix

Macronix were at Embedded World this year discussing the need for their Armor Flash in automotive and ADAS systems. Armor Flash is a highly secure non-volatile storage solution which comes at the ideal time for the industry as we move towards more automated systems in vehicles that need to be secure and with deterministic behaviour. Macronix realize the importance in secure flash for the automotive sector beyond ADAS. This is through recognizing that vehicles nowadays also need to rely on public networks which may be a security risk as well as vehicle in-app payments and even toll-booth automation.

Macronix Armor Flash is ready for the future with the rapidly changing memory requirements. These include standards adherence such as ISO 26262, ISO/SAE 21435 and other security standards, as well as increased authenticated & encrypted connections and larger secure storage for increased services, features & applications to store credentials, personal and financial information.

Raspberry Pi

If you were at the show, you no doubt got at least one of the new Raspberry Pi Pico devices for free? The dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processors were given out like any other freebie, but with 264kB internal RAM and support for up to 16MB of off-chip flash, you will find there is a lot more you can do with it than a keyring!
EPS Global supported and collaborated with Raspberry Pi on the design, engineering and development of their Raspberry Pi 400, designing-in their semiconductor components.

Wrap Up

At the end of day two, show attendees were treated to the sound of solid stone being chipped away gently as a group of sculptors got to work. Unfortunately, we were not there to see the end results, but as a work in progress, it all seemed very impressive.

Did you attend Embedded World 2022? What were your thoughts, and did you manage to try the Nürnberger bratwurst? Please leave your comments about your experience and thank you for reading.