Three trends affecting the future development of embedded processing technology

What is the future of embedded processing?

From a technology perspective, embedded systems will achieve greater energy efficiency, thereby helping to conserve energy and enable more environmentally sustainable electronics. They will enable more immersive interactions with humans and blend into their surroundings, such as more advanced autonomous robots to perform tasks and increase convenience. Such systems will be able to collect, analyze and respond to increasing amounts of data. Equally important, evolving technologies will become easier for more people to use, thereby fully enjoying the benefits brought by technological advancements.

To realize this future, embedded processors need to evolve: they need to become smarter while consuming less power. Additionally, there is a need for affordability, more integrated components, and intuitive embedded software and tool support.

Based on our insights into the industry and what we hear from our customers, there are three trends that are common across all embedded processing product lines that are also important features:

There is a growing need to collect more data from everything around people and find innovative ways to use it.

Taking smart cities as an example, energy management systems can use data to monitor and control energy usage in buildings, which can help reduce energy waste and lower usage costs. Public safety systems can add intelligence to detect and respond to emergencies, keeping cities safe. For smart homes, an ecosystem of connected devices can reduce energy consumption and improve comfort and safety for residents. Coupled with the need to upgrade grid infrastructure with more sustainable and renewable energy, the value of embedded intelligence that processes real-time data is only beginning to be understood and appreciated.

Energy management and infrastructure are also among the many rapidly developing application scenarios and possibilities that improve the quality and convenience of our lives, thanks to the increased sensing and processing capabilities of the electronic products we use every day.

The ability to integrate sensing and embedded intelligence into these systems was top of mind when developing our new family of microcontrollers. We aim to provide designers with a way to enhance the sensing capabilities of their systems and integrate more analog capabilities to simplify sensing circuit development within the system, eliminating the need for additional components. An example of the benefits of this integration is that in cavityless smoke detectors, the MSPM0 MCU can detect smoke faster in a smaller form factor.

Whether it’s smart security cameras monitoring homes and offices in real time, or autonomous robots transforming modern factory assembly lines, making every system intelligent has become the norm. As the demand for automation in various fields increases, especially intelligent automation, design engineers are applying more features and functions to the system to handle the continuous growth of data, make intelligent decisions and respond quickly.

Edge intelligence will become the core of intelligent automation systems. This means data is calculated close to the data acquisition sensor, resulting in safer, faster and more reliable processing.

For example, imagine cameras throughout a factory constantly monitoring equipment to detect and predict mechanical failures. Sending this data to the cloud outside the local network for processing and analysis and then waiting for a decision to stop the assembly line can impact assembly line quality and throughput while increasing overall costs. By enabling edge intelligence, the assembly process can be stopped in an instant if necessary.

Previously, cost and power constraints limited the degree of edge intelligence designers could achieve. When developing the AM6xA vision processor family, we aimed to help address this challenge by providing efficient and cost-effective processing options supported by a common development environment.

These processors are suitable for embedded vision applications, such as equipping automated stores with smart cameras that can identify which items consumers have purchased, creating a grab-and-go shopping experience.

Customers are challenged to bring their new products and innovations to market as quickly as possible, increasing the need to advance embedded systems. Our customers need to create differentiated capabilities quickly, reliably, and with the flexibility to respond to changing market conditions and customer preferences.

The embedded processing product family and its supporting ecosystem must be easy to design into while providing support strong enough to help customers meet all their embedded needs, speed time to market, and give designers more time to innovate. Therefore, I strongly recommend that companies use industry-wide open source software, community development platforms, and unified software development environments. These resources allow our clients to draw on the knowledge and experience of experts in the field, allowing them to design more efficiently and bring products to market at breakneck speed. Our innovations make it easier for engineers to make systems smarter, which will increase adoption and significantly increase our value to our customers.

I'm bullish on the future of embedded processing technologies and look forward to launching new product lines using these technologies and watching our customers unlock new ways to create a better world.

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