The Embedded Mantra: Power, Pervasiveness, Affordability

Silicon Valley is known for innovation. Until recently the Valley has had an insatiable desire for hardware and software engineers and for visionary entrepreneurs who could craft this engineering talent into high profile product and market successes. Many Indians succeeded fabulously at all levels of engineering and business ventures in this nirvana of possibilities and optimism. Now that one of the highest status symbols in the Valley has become today just having a good-old-fashioned “job”, what can be more timely than for the Valley to introduce us to the next wave of imagineering.

April’s Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco marked the signposts in this new era of opportunity. The signposts read “power”, “pervasiveness”, and “affordability”.

Power

Specialized embedded design enables the automation of both new processes and previously analogue processes. The Embedded Systems Conference demonstrated in many shapes and sizes that devices targeted for specific purposes have highlighted vast new levels of automation capability: from automobile control and robotics to communications and entertainment. Specialized digital devices are both easier to apply and more capable than their out-of-date analogue cousins. Further, many specialized hardware devices are now being replaced by more powerful generic platforms. The overwhelming trend suggests that as generic hardware becomes more powerful, specialized devices can be manufactured simply by building the right embedded software. Software, with good development tools, has become the key to producing powerful solutions cost-effectively.

As this show has demonstrated over the past few years, an inexpensive but comprehensive tool chain has been the value proposition of Linux since it began to be a significant player in the embedded devices arena. In addition to excellent intrinsic development tools, specialized tool sets are available from a variety of vendors including Lynuxworks, MontaVista, TimeSys, and IBM.

Pervasiveness

As more and more processes of everyday life become automated, specific purpose devices have become nearly universal. Modern automobiles typically have dozens of smart components using sensors and computers to control fuel injection and emissions, perform diagnostics, regulate temperature, etc. Once designed, cheap embedded devices can appear anywhere needed. Examples include self-configuring networks of smart sensors, process control nodes, factory automation, media gateways, VoIP, power management, controllers, and digital information devices.

But the automation of everyday life is not always cheap: for about a million Yen you can acquire an “almost human” companion based on sophisticated embedded technologies. Mitsubishi and MontaVista Software demonstrated a Linux-based human-size household robot that was a favorite of visitors to the conference this year.

Affordability

Economy of scale, level of integration and specificity of design combine to enable dramatic cost reductions. The vast majority of embedded devices can be produced with few parts, in simple steps and in high quantities so that costs are minimized. Although not all embedded devices will be cheap (as in the companion robot), most simple and widely adopted devices, such as entertainment systems, will remain inexpensive.

The Opportunity

The vast majority of new opportunities for Linux are not for the desktop, although the desktop remains a fertile battleground. Nor are these new opportunities for the server, although Linux will continue to sweep through all levels of server systems from personal servers to large-scale multi-processor and clustered servers. Instead, the overwhelming opportunities for Linux are in this new embedded device and applications space.

Likewise the business opportunities in this new era are for addressing the automation of all aspects of everyday life: computational devices will pervade everyday items from the car to the toaster and everyday activities from money and banking to medicine and travel. The opportunity for the new entrepreneur is to work new levels of automation into the fabric of everyday activities and to capitalize on the potentially large scale distribution of services and products.