Embedded World Nuremberg 2024: Highlights and Trends

Earlier this month, the Blecon team had the opportunity to attend Embedded World in Nuremberg. This annual event showcases the latest trends and innovations in the embedded systems industry. In this blog post, I'll share some of the key takeaways and highlights from the busy couple of days we spent at the event.

Cybersecurity Takes Center Stage

One of the most prominent themes at Embedded World this year was cybersecurity. The recent adoption of the EU's Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) by the EU parliament has brought renewed focus on the responsibilities of IoT device makers. The CRA introduces new requirements for best practices during device design, vulnerability reporting, and the ability to patch devices throughout their lifecycle. Additionally, the FCC has released a voluntary IoT cybersecurity labelling program with similar goals.

Although the CRA will not fully come into force for a couple of years, many consultancies at the event were already publicising services to help businesses comply with these regulations. We look forward to seeing more productised solutions entering the market soon to address these needs.

Open Source Community's Response to CRA

An interesting development at Embedded World was the announcement from various open-source foundations that they would be pooling their resources to create a common framework in response to the CRA. The open-source community successfully influenced the legislator to introduce specific treatment of open-source software in the CRA, ensuring that contributors would not unknowingly endorse liability regarding the law.

Some open-source projects, such as Zephyr, already employ best practices in managing vulnerabilities and help users track their open-source supply chain. Zephyr, for example, has the ability to generate a software bill of materials (SBOM) for a given build. 

EdgeAI: The Buzzword of the Year

EdgeAI (no longer AIoT, as the IoT is barely emerging from the trough of disillusionment) was the buzzword of the year at Embedded World. Nearly every company on the show floor was demonstrating something related to EdgeAI. However, the impression was more of evolution rather than revolution, with major IP and hardware players introducing new generations of existing products and the software space becoming quite consolidated.

Bluetooth's Strong Presence

It was great to see Bluetooth having a strong presence at the show, with silicon vendors, IP companies, and consultancies all showcasing Bluetooth-related innovations. The AuraCast (audio broadcasting over Bluetooth LE) marketing machine was in full swing, with numerous demos to experience. LE Audio, one of the newest areas in the Bluetooth specification, was a highlight, along with other innovations in smart labelling and positioning.

Other Notable Highlights

Other noteworthy highlights from Embedded World included the growing momentum around Zephyr, which seems to be gaining more silicon vendor commitment, and the increasing presence of Rust in the safety-critical world. We're excited to see more companies working on Rust software for the IoT space, particularly in the realm of IoT security, such as Platform Security Architecture implementations.

Joint Demo with Memfault

We were excited to showcase a joint demo with Memfault on their booth, demonstrating their new Device Vitals feature. This feature provides a set of standardised metrics for tracking device reliability, connectivity, and battery discharge across device fleets. The demo was based on Blecon-enabled devices and highlighted how low-cost IoT Connectivity can enable observability across a new class of IoT devices. A big thank you to the Memfault team for this collaboration!

Looking Ahead to Embedded World North America

Later this year, we will be exhibiting at Embedded World for the first time in Austin, Texas. If you're planning to attend the first edition of Embedded World North America, please let us know. We'd love to connect with you there!

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