Using FPGAs for demanding applications
Alexandre Raymond
October 5, 2023
Discover how to drive innovation and leverage strategic partnerships in software development. Discover industry trends, key areas of high-tech expertise and the secret recipe for successful strategic partnerships.
In the TechCrunch article Eduardo Saverin on the ‘world of innovation past Silicon Valley’, Saverin says, “If you think about it, the past few decades have been about the rise of the consumer internet. The next few decades will be about how you’re going to bring digital transformation to large traditional industries.” Competition between high-tech companies is increasingly fierce, both to be first to market with innovative software product development solutions and to find the talent to design and develop these solutions.
In this article, we briefly examine how different industries fuel the demand for innovative solutions, the technical expertise needed to drive custom software development, and how to use strategic partnerships to provide needed expertise.
Topics covered:
Digital transformation in multiple industries is fueling the demand for custom software solutions
8 essential areas of high-tech expertise
Strategic partnerships drive innovative software product development
Identify the best candidates to partner with for software development
What to expect from a top software development company
For more information about strategic partnerships, see 6 powerful benefits of software development partnerships
The advent of specialized semiconductors and software solutions has created drastic changes in the last few years in many industries:
The ceotodaymagazine.com article How Traditional Industries Can Compete for the Top Tech Talent says, “Even in the more traditional industries where technology has historically been something of an afterthought, like law, companies are now implementing highly sophisticated and complex digital transformation projects.”
Many critical businesses were also pushed into digital transformation out of necessity due to the global pandemic caused by COVID-19.
To stay competitive, high-tech leaders must quickly find ways to overcome technological challenges and talent recruitment problems while managing shorter development cycles and limited budgets. Decision-makers must increase their R&D expertise, reduce development time, and make their products and services commercially successful.
To constantly innovate and overcome seemingly impossible challenges in the world of high technology and electronics, it’s important to have access to a range of expertise in software development. Although specific needs will vary for different products, services, and industries, mastering some or all of these areas of expertise is paramount:
Advances in semiconductor technologies and the integration of hardware acceleration modules into ASSP and SoCs have exponentially increased the complexity of some embedded systems. Examples include computer vision systems such as RADAR and LiDAR used in autonomous vehicles or the next generation of 5G wireless base stations. These innovations and technological advances require more advanced embedded software solutions to achieve the desired levels of performance while maintaining reliable and robust solutions.
The Internet of Things (IoT) revolution is already transforming business and daily life. With IoT, objects become “smart” and integrate seamlessly across a global network capable of driving significant economic, social, and business benefits.
To fully realize the benefits of IoT, accurate and reliable data is paramount. Combined with reliable, secure and cost-effective connectivity solutions, high-quality information can empower businesses to generate new revenue streams and process improvements.
More and more applications require the processing of large volumes of data in real time, creating opportunities to move computing from the cloud to the edge. Examples include video surveillance applications for public safety and optimized traffic flows, and Industry 4.0-centric applications using robotics to automate manufacturing processes. By offering reliable, low-latency communications, 5G communications will allow many of these applications to realize their potential.
In some applications, edge computing will go hand-in-hand with cloud computing to take advantage of each other’s strengths. In cases with several thousand IoT sensors each generating a vast amount data, it would be advantageous to pre-process the data collected to extract useful information. That information could then be relayed to the cloud where other larger scale information could be extracted using machine learning algorithms, for example.
Understand how FPGA applications are so fast, powerful and efficient.
It’s no longer a secret that wireless communications are now an integral part of our lives. Wireless is not only at the center of mobile devices, but also increasingly in vehicles, connected objects, medical devices, and so on. The number of wireless communication protocols continues to grow, and it is becoming challenging to understand the advantages and inconveniences of each one. Although they’re available on a large scale and at low cost, the wireless protocols adopted by mobile devices (LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth) are not always the best choice for other types of applications and in some cases must be customized to meet specific requirements.
Manufacturers of communication and networking equipment are increasingly leaning towards virtualization software solutions based on a Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture and running on agnostic hardware platforms. In several industries, new networking technologies require raising the level of performance expected while maintaining a high quality of service. For some applications, SmartNIC solutions are used to reduce the load on CPUs by distributing the networking, computing, and storage functions directly on NICs. FPGA Manufacturers have recently made significant investments in these types of solutions.
Digital signal processing algorithms are now at the heart of several industries and applications. Examples include the voice control and noise reduction systems found in mobile devices, wireless communication systems using massive MIMO and Beamforming technologies, and RADAR systems used in assisted driving applications. The advent of specialized processors and design tools such as Matlab are using a higher level of abstraction allowing developers and researchers to continually innovate to find solutions that meet ever higher expectations in terms of performance, reliability, and cost.
The world is going digital. To connect, we must trust information we exchange. End-to-end security management has never been more important to ensure security and privacy, while building strong identities and maintaining user trust. As the diversity of digital applications and the number of connected devices continues to increase, security threats are evolving and growing even faster. In order to avoid security breaches, it is incumbent on companies to consider security aspects first when developing their electronic and software solutions.
One of the most important technologies of our era is artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML), which allows systems to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. For example, the autonomous driving system revealed during the April 22, 2019 Tesla Autonomy Investor Day is based on a custom ASIC developed by Tesla’s engineers. This system is capable of merging information from multiple sensors (cameras, RADAR, ultrasonic) to create real-time, accurate scene information on the road. Using CNN (convolutional neural networks), models constantly improving as they learn from data collected from thousands of road scenes from Tesla’s vehicles; the system can detect the presence of vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, and other objects.
While high-tech companies recognize the need for technical experts, recruiting talent with specific expertise can be difficult and time-consuming. The technative.io article The Tech Recruitment Challenge explains that, “On average, the recruitment process takes approximately 52 days according to a study from Bersin by Deloitte… Integrating new talent into tech functions can be equally costly and time-consuming. The whole process involves vetting applicants, conducting interviews, skills testing them, negotiating terms of employment, before finally getting the new hire up to speed in their role. The process can take several months, depending on seniority.”
With so much cross-fertilization among technologies used in different industries, many high-tech companies are joining forces with leading partners. By forming a partnership to acquire access to technical experts, a company can keep its core team focused on its area of expertise while quickly bringing innovative new solutions to market.
In the cio.com opinion piece Effective partnerships drive innovation, CIO Adam Wakefield says, “By collaborating with smart organizations of all sizes, corporations drive productivity gains both for their customers and for their own professionals. It’s a win-win for all parties.”
When selecting a company to partner with, it’s important to identify and qualify top-notch software development partners that have
A top-tier partner with solid expertise in software development will have proven time and time again that it can deliver complex solutions with tight deadlines. Continuous innovation is a key differentiator prioritized by leading software development partners.
A good software development partner should
It’s essential to choose a reputable software partner with a unique identity, a corporate vision and a first-class reputation acclaimed by innovative high-tech companies.
For more information about strategic partnerships, see 6 powerful benefits of partnering with a leading software development company
CTOs and technical leaders from top high-tech companies confidently partner with Orthogone to augment the technical expertise of their teams.
“I lead a small team of innovators where our responsibility is to protect FLIR from disruptions from all sorts of directions in the market… We have a partnership with Orthogone where they have very highly qualified people that we use to expand the bandwidth of my small team… Having the level of expertise that they bring to the table is very enabling to expand the capability of my team.”
– Pierre Boulanger, CTO FLIR Systems
“We pride ourselves on bringing game-changing innovations to the market. Through out-of-the-box thinking, we’ve been able to achieve something pretty impressive in our work with Orthogone – a line of innovative products that surpasses what the competition can offer in terms of both flexibility and performance. We trust Orthogone’s expertise and high standards – they consistently deliver a quality product and integrate seamlessly with the team.”
– Etienne Campeau, Software Engineering Manager Kongsberg Automotive
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