It was a very unusual embedded world. The reason was de facto the coronavirus and the resulting lung disease Covid-19. Numerous exhibitors canceled their participation, the fear of the virus spreading was too great. Nevertheless, over 930 exhibitors from 42 countries made their way to Nuremberg and presented their latest developments to around 13,800 trade visitors.

Naturally, around 200 companies canceled their participation in the trade fair. Some companies canceled their participation at such short notice that although the exhibition stand was set up, exhibits and stand personnel were missing. The exhibition organizers at Nürnberg Messe responded to the cancellations by restructuring some of the halls.

Some exhibitors were therefore pleased to have a better location in the exhibition halls, and empty hall areas were transformed into relaxation zones with seating and plants.

The impact of the coronavirus on embedded world dominated the trade fair
discussions and reporting on the trade fair. In some cases, the technological developments of the remaining exhibitors took a back seat. Wrongly so, because under the trade fair motto 'Connecting Embedded Intelligence', they showcased software, hardware, tools, services and systems for artificial intelligence, edge and cloud computing, networking and numerous options for collecting, evaluating and analyzing data.

embedded award 2020 presented

The 'embedded award' was presented in the categories Hardware, Software, Embedded Vision, Safety & Security and Start-ups.

© NuernbergMesse / Frank Boxler

Traditionally, the embedded awards were presented on the first day of the fair in the five
categories Hardware, Software, Embedded Vision, Safety & Security and Start-ups. An expert jury had evaluated the entries in advance, and the prize was ultimately presented by Thomas Preutenborbeck, Head of Own and Partner Events at Nürnberg Messe, and Professor Dr.-Ing. Axel Sikora, Chairman of the Jury and the Advisory Board of embedded world.

Giga Dvice Semiconductor was honored in the 'Hardware' category for its Bumblebee processor core based on the new RISC-V open source instruction set architecture. This is the first time that a general-purpose MCU has been implemented under a RISC-V core.

Crank Software impressed in the 'Software' category with an open source development tool for user interfaces. The 'Hybrid Rendering' function in the Storyboard UI development tool enables the rendering of comprehensive user interfaces using multiple graphics accelerators (3DGPU and 2DGPU) in the same embedded application. This function is important for battery-powered mobile and IoT-based devices that meet the high demands on user experience with low power consumption.

NewAE Technology won the 'Safety & Security' category with its open source library Chip Amour. This can be used to develop embedded
software solutions that resist fault injection.

First prize in the 'Embedded Vision' category went to DC Vision Systems for the DC-SVP (Stereo Vision Processor). This is a stereo camera and electronic control unit with an integrated processor and a hardware accelerator based on FPGA technology. A stereo image processing pipeline is implemented in the firmware of the DC-SVP, which enables the measurement of the surrounding 3D geometry within the field of view in real time directly and exclusively on the camera.

In the 'Start-up' category, Quanticor Security won with its quantum computer-resistant authentication and encryption solution Quantum-IDEncrypt. The security solution is equipped with a device management system. In contrast to previous systems, the public keys are derived from short identifiers such as the serial number, MAC addresses or other identifiers. This means that no public key infrastructure (PKI) needs to be set up.