Design Week Addresses Challenges That Transcend Markets

As business people, we examine opportunities for future growth by looking at market segments and the end products of which they are comprised. We want to focus our combined efforts on those areas that provide the largest return on investment. This is "business 101".

For many semiconductor companies - and other electronics companies – those markets will be largely familiar. Automotive, data centers, 5G, Internet-of-Things (IoT)… sound familiar? As drivers of electronics hardware and software, these markets increasingly provide multiplier effects to each other.

IoT could refer to any "thing", and increasingly it does: things in the home, things in the office, things in retail space, things you carry, things you wear. The common aspects are that each of these things includes some level of connectivity; produces some amount of data and has some degree of intelligence (perhaps incorporating machine learning); and increasingly must include security to protect the data or the thing itself.

Where does much of this data go? To data centers, where it is aggregated, processed, and stored. Data centers include vast degrees of computational and organizational intelligence and are incorporating artificial intelligence. They are connected internally and externally and must also be secure.

And how does the data from all those things get to the data center and back again?  Well, increasingly it will be through a 5G network. While the network is of course the essence of connectivity, it also includes edge intelligence and network management intelligence, and must be secure to ensure protection of data during its journey.

Then there is the automobile. The mechanical car of yesterday is the electronic system of today, which collects and processes data, depends on connectivity within and without and also must be secure in order to maintain safety and protect data. This is replicated in multiple transportation subsystems, each of which is vastly complex by itself. Autonomous driving systems are IoT microcosms, sensing the environment, processing data at the edge, and connecting within and outside the vehicle, all while maintaining security. Electric propulsion systems monitor and manage power and connect that power around the vehicle. The dashboard of today combines the functions of yesterday’s smart phone, entertainment system, GPS, and interior control, and must include intelligence, connectivity, and security to do so. Just think of the charging station compared to a mechanical pump. While the charging station delivers electric fuel, it does so only after analyzing the connection it has made with the vehicle and ensuring safety and security. It includes data connectivity to the vehicle and the grid.

Increasingly, complex systems design must optimize the use of hardware and software. To get to market quickly and maximize revenue, to reduce costs and maximize profit, and to reduce the risk of deploying new systems, the design community must understand the ecosystem and make informed partitioning decisions. Development systems are an integral part of design iteration and risk mitigation.

These common themes across markets, of intelligence, connectivity, and security, are in evidence as we approach Design Week 2022. As we thought about the topics that keep coming up in our interactions with the engineering community, those three themes came up repeatedly, across all markets of interest.  In the end, we organized this year’s tracks around artificial intelligence and machine learning, connectivity and embedded solutions, and safety and security. While there are of course numerous differences to the design challenges faced in each type of equipment, we hope to share some knowledge across these common themes.

Visit our Design Week Events to learn how you can register to attend.