"embedded world has developed extremely positively over the past two decades. This was once again impressively demonstrated in 2019. Around 31,000 trade visitors from 84 countries and 1117 companies - almost 100 more than last year - from 42 countries presented themselves at the leading trade fair for the embedded community. The international share of exhibitors has risen again to 56%. The trade fair also increased its floor space by a further 8%. These are the biggest figures to date for the exhibition in terms of exhibitor numbers and exhibition space, and we continue to see potential in this dynamic market," summarizes Richard Krowoza, Member of the Management Board, NürnbergMesse.

The accompanying embedded world Conference and electronic displays Conference were equally successful, with a total of around 2,000 participants and speakers from 46 countries. The embedded world Conference chose 'Embedded Intelligence' as its main theme for 2019. The electronic displays Conference has also established itself as a B2B platform for display technologies. Professor Karl Heinz Blankenbach, Chairman of the Committee, was very satisfied: "The conference has developed excellently and has grown once again.

Another real success is the electronic displays area, which was bigger than ever before." This year, the focus was on current display technologies such as LCD, touch, optical bonding, display systems and the promising HDR technology. In addition to the already familiar special areas electronic displays Area, M2M, safety & security and the young innovative companies, the 'start-up Area' celebrated its premiere this year. "We are delighted that we were able to attract so many young entrepreneurs to embedded world right from the start. The area was fully booked in the first year. We will certainly continue to expand our start-up promotion and extend the content," says Benedikt Weyerer, Director of embedded world at NürnbergMesse.

There was a small anniversary to celebrate on the last day of the fair: embedded world Student Day took place for the tenth time in 2019. This year it was attended by over 1000 students from all over Europe.

Cooperation in the field of AI

One topic that was omnipresent at the trade fair was artificial intelligence. The companies Advantech, AMD and Mentor have joined forces to establish this quickly and easily in practice. The aim of this partnership is to generate more AI-based business opportunities. The partnership aims to help users accelerate AI implementation by integrating the various products and services of the cooperation partners. This will allow users to focus on the development of the application.

Specifically, Advantech offers an embedded platform (SOM-5871/AIMB-228) with the latest Ryzen Embedded V1000 processors from AMD in conjunction with the embedded Linux operating system from Mentor. The AMD processor supports frameworks, libraries, tools and compilers for image processing applications that benefit from the power of the Ryzen processor with Radeon Vega GPU technology. More importantly, the three companies use open standards such as OpenVX and OpenCL API supported on the Linux kernel to enable users to apply machine learning across different hardware architectures to a variety of AI applications.

AI in live use could be seen at the Congatec stand in a retail deep learning application (see image). The solution, developed by Basler in close collaboration with Congatec and NXP, is a proof-of-concept that uses artificial intelligence (AI). Visitors to the stand were able to place goods in their shopping basket and the trained neural network recognized the products. Finally, the invoice total was displayed.

Congatec also used the trade fair to present its figures for the past financial year. At the press conference, the company announced record growth of 24% compared to the previous year and record sales of USD 132.5 million compared to USD 106.6 million in 2017. Congatec also expects further growth for 2019 based on the current order backlog.

One focus of Congatec's growth strategy is on growth markets driven by the digital transformation. Among other things, the company is entering the 3.5-inch single board computer (SBC) market - with a 40% increase in performance for existing applications. In order to achieve this performance increase, the new 'conga-JC370' 3.5-inch SBCs are equipped with the 8th generation Intel Core i7 mobile processors (code-named Whiskey Lake). OEM customers should benefit from very early access to this new processor architecture. In the future, the company will support all relevant processors that are suitable for this compact SBC form factor - including the various embedded variants of the brand new 8th generation Intel Core i7 Mobile processors.

Focus on real time

Together with Intel and Real-Time Systems, Congatec also presented a live demo of the new industrial application server platform for multiple industrial real-time controllers at embedded world. With its deterministic behavior on up to six cores, the industrial application server platform based on COM Express Type 6 modules with an Intel Xeon E2 processor can handle several real-time and non-real-time tasks. These include smart vision, artificial intelligence, robot control and, optionally, IIoT-based monitoring, maintenance and management. The application-ready, multitasking-capable industrial control platform uses the RTS hypervisor from Real-Time Systems. It is designed for the next generations of vision-based collaborative robots, automation controllers and autonomous vehicles that need to manage multiple tasks in parallel - including situational awareness using deep learning-based AI algorithms. "As next-generation industrial control systems are networked, they also need to interact with each other in real time. We also see the need to integrate vision-based AI for many applications. In addition, IIoT-based data exchange is needed to monitor machines distributed in a wide variety of industrial fields. The demo of our industrial-grade application server platform, designed for multiple real-time controllers, was qualified precisely for such applications," explained Christian Eder, Director Marketing at Congatec.

Real-time was also the focus of the industrial computer platform for TSN applications announced by Kontron. The 'KBox A-230-LS' is equipped with a SMARC module based on the NXP Dual Cortex A72-LS1028 processor. The SMARC-sAL28 module offers up to five integrated TSN-capable 1 GB Ethernet ports directly from the controller and meets the specifications of the TSN standard IEEE 802.1. According to Kontron, this makes the current 'KBox' ideal for use in industrial IoT environments based on Ethernet protocol standards. The two ARM v8 processor cores support real-time processing in industrial control systems as well as virtual machines for edge computing in the IoT. The CPU includes integrated GPU and LCD controllers, enabling the implementation of HMI systems. A serial interface (RS232/RS485 and optional CAN) ensures local data acquisition and connection to the sensor or machine environment. The connection to the IT environment can be made via the integrated Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.