Bangalore: Embedded Developer Conference served as a phenomenal platform bringing together experts from various fields such as Consumer Electronics and Aerospace to showcase and present on the current respective technologies.

The conference had four exciting parallel tracks on major embedded technology domains i.e., Consumer Electronics, Networks, Automotive and Aerospace & Defense. This forum provided a wonderful opportunity to all the Developers, Project Managers, Consultants, Researchers and many more to know, understand and get updated on the latest trends, developments and technology evolution which is happening in Embedded Space.

Heartfelt thanks from SiliconIndia to all the speakers, sponsors, delegates and all the parties for making this conference a grand success.

With over 350 delegates and 31 Stellar Speakers, the conference had 28 Technical Presentations  and plenty of time was allocated for networking with their likeminded peers.

The Networks Track initiated with an interesting session on “Challenges in Multi-RAT Mobile Phone Receiver Design” by Sajal Kumar Das, Senior Member Technical Staff, ST-Ericsson. While presenting about the challenges he said “Due to ever increasing demand for higher data rate, lower latency, support of complex applications, and seamless handover among various networks, mobile phone system is becoming more and more complex in order to provide support for new wireless standards, modulation schemes, radio access technologies, multiple radio bands and housing multiple antennas. This is bringing up new challenges for designing unique handsets that can offer solutions providing low power consumption, low cost, smaller size, high performance and tremendous flexibility.”

The following session was on “Riding the Next Wave – M2M” addressed by Narasimha Prabhu M, Product Engineering, Tech Mahindra. According to Narasimha, “ Machine to Machine communication (M2M) is the new technology wave which is bigger than the previous technology waves like main frame computing, personal computing and mobile computing. M2M involves sensors/ devices connected through wireless/ wired media and exchanging data for providing solutions to real life problems. M2M offers significant opportunities for developers, service providers and system integrators to offer solutions in this market segment.” He also highlighted the various applications in several verticals and the benefits as well.

Harikumar Santhibhavan, R&D Manager, Nokia Siemens Networks while speaking on “Mobile Broadband: A Key Driver for the Embedded Ecosystem” said, “LTE is the key driver for the proliferation of Smartphones and also a key segment in the embedded systems market. By implementing the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) platform, network providers can address the dual challenge of providing Voice over LTE (VoLTE) as well as moving to the next level of providing converged & Rich multimedia services.”

The next session was on “Convergence Pattern – Drivers of New Products and Ideas” addressed by Virendra Gupta, SVP & Business Line Head, Huawei Technologies. Virendra said “In the past, there have been many product and service innovations which have followed several convergence patterns. Understanding of this can help in identifying new product and service offerings in future. Technology, Product, Industry, Data and Service convergence are some example of patterns which have seen in past.”

While discussing upon “Embedded Communication Protocol Implementations for M2M / IoT”, Manjuprakash Rama Rao, Director - Advanced Research and Development from Tyco International said “There is tremendous value for businesses to adopt M2M, gain insights and monetize the data aggregated from "connected things." He also added that the solution ecosystem and standardization effort can play a significant impact in accelerating the adoption.

Pravin Bhandarkar, Senior Product Manager, Juniper Networks in his session on "Specific Trends in Routing Protocols” highlighted that "data networking control plane is undergoing a rapid change requiring network vendors to provide resilient, scalable and programmable capabilities to support new business models. Border Gateway protocol provides a robust and widely deployed Layer 3 building block to support these services both within and across domains."

Ramakrishna Rama, Director - Software Engineering, Dell during his session on “Embedded Management in Server / Telecom Computing Platforms” explained how embedded systems management has evolved from basic Hardware inventory and monitoring to software enriched advanced remote management features without the need of an Operating System running on the computing platform, let’s say server. He also mentioned the various dedicated and powerful SoC based solutions to provide systems management remotely. The IPMI – Intelligent Platform Management Interface is an open standard that has been widely accepted in the industry for low level HW monitoring and Inventory. It also serves as a basic building block overall high availability advanced systems management solution; and it can easily be mapped or integrated with other upper layer open standards such as SAF HPI for telecom / datacom and DMTF CIM/WS.

In Consumer Electronics Track while speaking on “Analytics on CE Media Devices”, Harish Rajagopal, Architect: Media & Entertainment – Solutions Group, Wipro Technologies provided an introduction to the Analytics, the various points to be kept in mind, and a five step process, for incorporating analytics to devices. While the session illustrated examples in Digital Media Devices, it could be applied to any Consumer Electronic Device.

While discussing on “Connected Devices Solutions”, Avnish Kumar, Assistant Vice President - Integrated Engineering Solutions, Mahindra Satyam and Dr. Suma Aswatha, Practice Head, Mahindra Satyam covered the various aspects starting from evolution of devices, specific use cases and how the connected devices will further accelerate mobile opportunity with the next wave of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT). The speakers also highlighted on the growing category and the internet-connected devices that would enable connected cars, connected healthcare, connected homes to build automation.

Rajeev Mathur, Country Head - India, Coverity and Senthil Kumar, Sales Engineering Manager, Coverity presented on “Development Testing – Shift to Source” where both discussed on how Coverity helps companies develop mobile and consumer electronics devices and to ensure software quality and security—without sacrificing speed or cost. From smartphones to GPS navigation systems, it's an innovation arms race to deliver new products and features to market ahead of the competition. Consumers expect high quality products that are reliable and work as intended. But reliability is now just part of the software quality equation. Mobility coupled with increasing interconnectivity increases the risk of security attacks. Software defects that impact product reliability, performance or security could mean lost revenues, lost customer satisfaction, and brand damage. Unfortunately, the need for speed and time to market all too often means not enough time for software testing and increasing the risk of software defects entering the field. Static Analysis solutions from Coverity helps in Automate code testing with accuracy and surface issues in the developer workflow. Remediate quality and security issues quickly and efficiently. Manage issues to resolution with an enforceable, traceable process & Enforce a consistent code quality and security standard across your entire supply chain: internal teams, open source and third party suppliers.

While speaking on the topic “Android - Opportunities Beyond Smartphones and Tablets”, Navanee Sundaramoorthy, Technology & Innovation Consultant for Xilinx & San Disk said "While Android is already the leading platform for Smartphones and Tablets; its open and flexible nature makes it appealing for a wide range of Embedded applications in Consumer, Automotive, Medical, Industrial and even Defense markets. Embedded Developers can leverage Android by merely making software changes or develop hardware accessories or completely customize both hardware and software to their needs."

To inspire innovative product ideas using Android, Navanee provided three new ideas ranging from a simple rugged Digital Kiosk and Gaming device to a sophisticated secure military handheld smart device.

Parellel to the Networks Track was the Automotive Track, took a grand start with a Keynote Session by Sri Krishnan, Vice President, Robert Bosch on “Opportunities in Challenging Times” in Embedded Automotive Space.

Rajkumar Srinivasan, Director, Visteon while discussing on the “V2X Technology” highlighted on the V2X Technology insights which included the use cases, the challenges related to standardization, security, certification and cost in adopting the V2X technology quickly.

The following session was on “Challenges in Automotive Embedded Software Development on Multicore Processors & Multi-Processor Systems" addressed by Karthik S Srivatsa, Technical Manager - Active Safety SW, Delphi. Karthik said “In addition to analysis of each core for adequacy in terms of memory and throughput for an application, multicore processors and multiprocessor system require analysis of memory bandwidth, DMA, core synchronization, latency and impact on vehicle bus jitter to ensure system design robustness.”

The last session in this track was on “Digital Radio Mondiale - A Digital Radio Standard Targeted for India”, by Pushparaj Dominic, Systems Architect, NXP Semiconductors. According to Pushparaj “Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) is the most promising Radio Standard for India going forward, considering its geography, population and mindset of the people.” He further adds, “It is great that the existing AM Radio in Cars is easily extensible to support DRM at a relatively low additional cost.”

The Aerospace and Defense Track, also took a great start with a session on “High-Performance Embedded Computing for Aerospace & Defense Applications“, addressed by Kiran Kumar S, Field Applications Manager - Military & Aerospace, GE India - Intelligent Platforms. According to Kiran “Today’s Defense and Aerospace embedded computing demands high bandwidth sensor data and low latency computational requirement while keeping the Size Weight & Power (SWAP) low.” He also highlighted on the Rugged GP-GPU CUDA enabled solutions and related technologies which are the building blocks for such High-Performance embedded Computing.

The following session was on “It's Time to Re-Think Testing - Development Testing for Aerospace & Defense”. Rajeev Mathur and Senthil Kumar from Coverity who were our Platinum Sponsor presented as to how their technology can help developers in detecting the defects & bugs at early stage of SW life Cycle Development to improve the Code quality and Developer Productivity. The use of Coverity technology in mission-critical projects with zero tolerance for error is a testament to our unique ability to quickly detect unpredictable and traditionally hard to spot software defects. Coverity® Static Analysis is an industry leading development testing solution that leverages sophisticated analysis techniques like Inter-procedural analysis, Boolean Satisfiability Solvers, Statistical Analysis for finding and eliminating hard-to-spot code defects early in the software development lifecycle, as the code is being written, when they are the easiest and least expensive to find and fix.

The next session was on “Tame the Complexity of Developing Safety Critical Applications” where Manish. K. Singh, Product Manager, IBM said “To succeed in today's fast paced, competitive marketplace, A&D companies must cultivate efficient and effective ways to communicate and collaborate across business and engineering domains. “ He also threw light upon DO-178C safety standard support for Aerospace applications helping organizations to reduce the time to market, Cost and Risk of Developing Profitable & reliable Products and Systems.

While discussing on the topic “Embedded Systems for Defense Applications - An Overview”, Tisni Kurian, Manager - Avionics Segment Business, Larsen & Toubro covered a detailed account on design and architecting of a reliable avionics system for military aircrafts. The talk emphasized on various aspects  that needs to be considered for realisation of reliable avionics systems like system modeling, architecting a configuration, selection of components, detailed reliability analysis, software designing, fabrication techniques and  the stringent tests and  qualifications that need to be carried out.

This event was supported by Coverity, Klocwork, Uchi Embedded Systems and Embedded Systems Solutions.