The trend of platform-based embedded design has been rapidly accelerating and the reason for this is clear—it is too expensive to design systems due to the complexity and resultant number of engineers required to get a product out the door. The complexity is highlighted by all the various elements required to build an industrial IoT product like a factory automation controller or a vision-guided robot or a wind turbine—from cybersecurity and safety to embedded software and AI, and everything in between.
The concept of a platform is an elegant one but it requires that a company invest in one or a small handful of approaches and go “all in” on that to leverage the full return on investment. Simultaneously, there are certain megatrends impacting all applications from consumer electronics to industrial equipment like the desire for miniaturization, lower power, lightweight wired connectivity or entirely wireless connectivity.
