After a three-year hiatus, we were finally able to hold an in-person Embedded Tech Trends! It was wonderful to see everyone in the flesh, and to enjoy a good conversation and a meal in a restaurant. We had a full house with 15 sponsors and 15 members of the industry media in attendance. The energy at the event, when it is held in-person, is impossible to emulate in a virtual environment. The exchanging of ideas and networking was great to see. I enjoyed the presentations, despite spending over 40 years in this industry, and I always learn something new. A full summary of the event is included in this edition of VITA Technologies. The presentations and videos have been posted at www.embeddedtechtrends.com. We are already deep into planning for next year’s event, to be held January 22 and 23 at a warm location that we hope to announce soon.
VITA membership ended 2022 with 29 new members and the new-member pace remains high with seven new members since the start of this year. Most of the new members are in the defense and aerospace industry, with several from the space industry. We look forward to their contributions. The standards arm of VITA is busier than ever with several exciting new projects just getting started. The demand for open standards for the intelligent and critical embedded computing industry has never been higher. Check out the Standards Update column on page 6 for a summary of the most recent activities. VITA members can get full working group reports on the VITA website.
In this issue, I test the world of artificial intelligence (AI) with a chat with a bot (read it here). I asked it several questions about our industry, open standards, and VITA’s role in the development of those standards. The answers were interesting and surprisingly accurate. The impact of AI on the development of standards is sure to be great, but the contributions of humans will remain critical. I am hoping that AI will help us develop better tools to verify, test, and implement future standards development. The VITA staff is always on the lookout for tools and methods that will improve our processes. New tools for modeling and verification are on the agenda for the May VITA Standards Organization (VSO) meeting. It is expected that a study group will be launched to further study the requirements and possible solutions. The complexity of many of the standards is making it necessary to get to the next level using some kind of automation and assistance from artificial intelligence.
VITA has recently published two market reports: The first is analyst Brian Arbuckle’s quarterly “VITA Market Developments” (https://www.vita.com/VITA_Market_Development) report, focusing on the VITA members and new products. The second is Ray Alderman’s first-half report, “2023 State of the VITA Technology Industry” (www.vita.com/VITA_Technology_Industry) in which he delves into economic and technology issues at a macro level. Both reports have interesting perspectives as we navigate through the current global challenges. I am also working with Brian to develop our next in-depth industry survey to scope the size of the VITA technologies market. We hope to begin collecting responses this summer in preparation for the release of a report this fall. Gathering data is a challenge in this market, so we have developed a new survey that we hope can get us more information from a broader spectrum of contributors.
I’m off to Seattle to visit our boat builder. My wife and I hope to start our adventure on the Great Loop waterways this coming winter. The dream is coming closer to reality as the boat nears completion. We have a lot of work ahead as we learn about the boat, the Great Loop, and living aboard!
Stay healthy, stay safe.