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As manufacturing across all industries develops and implements IIoT ecosystems that connect its machines, equipment, and production systems to the digital enterprise with smart edge devices, today’s embedded systems technology will provide the edge intelligence. In this evolving digital enterprise of connected factories and plants, embedded systems are the foundation for the growth in next generation smart connected IoT devices. These intelligent edge devices provide new levels of sensor data that can aggregate and analyze data at the edge and stream information to support predictive analytics platforms and the concept of the digital twin. Embedded systems powering intelligent edge devices and smart sensors provides actionable information to support asset monitoring, data analytics, process alarming, process control, machine learning, and the emerging AI ability for machines to make sense of and act on complex data patterns. The computational capabilities currently in servers and cloud computing are migrating into the gateways and edge devices for IIoT networks.
It comes as no surprise that the first phase of IIoT will be the proliferation of intelligent edge devices. If industry is to move to ecosystems of smart connected machines and production systems, the first step is to create a digital environment that connects factories and plants with intelligent devices that can access, capture, aggregate, and analyze data at the source of the production process, and provide actionable information that will optimize manufacturing and improve the product itself. Embedded systems technology will be the prime enabler of this.
Embedded Systems Market is Diverse and Complex
The complete embedded systems market is very large, highly fragmented, and includes multiple sectors for hardware, software, and many market segments from consumer electronics to industries like automotive and aerospace, high tech, and medical devices.
The entire complete embedded market includes hardware (silicon, PCBs, firmware, target devices, etc.) and software (development platforms, RTOSs, testing, etc.) Additionally, these sectors of embedded systems technology represent only part of the larger market for the machines they empower. The software only component of the embedded systems market is estimated at about 6 percent of the total market.
The cost of simple high volume consumer embedded devices can be 99 percent hardware 1 percent software, but the cost of low volume embedded systems used for aircraft or highly reliable industrial controls can be over 95 percent software costs, when testing and compliance to standards on complex applications are included. To further complicate the market for embedded systems there is not a clear boundary between embedded systems and computers. Even today, there is some debate about whether a smart phone or a smart IoT gateway is an embedded system or a standalone computer.
Embedded Systems in Automation Evolves to IIoT
Manufacturing and the automation of production systems has always been a target for embedded systems, penetration of the automation sector by embedded systems technology suppliers has remained a market sector, albeit somewhat limited, for the industry. This is mostly due to the proprietary nature of automation equipment, devices, and software that is controlled by the automation suppliers. Today, with the emergence of the IIoT and the intelligent edge devices that will support IIoT ecosystems, the open nature of the Internet will begin to replace the proprietary environment of production automation systems. This is one of the primary drivers of open controls architecture.
ARC will be publishing (this month) a new market study for embedded systems software, with a focus on IIoT and the intelligent edge device market. The aim is to update the embedded systems market in the context of the digital transformation taking place across industry and the emergence of the smart connected edge.