The last Embedded World was back in February of 2020, but the event was hit hard by Covid-19 with many exhibitors and visitors deciding to pull out last minute. No-one knew then that it would take almost two and half years before the embedded industry would regroup again in Nuremberg. Even now, in June 2022, a lot of people are still hesitant to travel and the volume of visitors in the halls was half this time compared to the glory days of 2018 or 2019. However, compared to December 2021 and the RISC-V Summit in California, this time there were no empty aisles and there was a steady flow of visitors walking the halls. Embedded World 2022 was an important conference for us and the RISC-V community.
Everyone knows about RISC-V and Codasip is no longer a well-kept secret
You know when you meet children that you have not seen in a few years and cannot get over how much they have grown? Well, probably some people had that same experience with RISC-V this time around at Embedded World 2022. Because it was evident that RISC-V is all grown up now!
Thinking back to my second week at Codasip in 2017, I was at our stand at Embedded World. We had displays that spoke of RISC-V and processor design automation, but our exhibit caused raised eyebrows. The typical passer-by simply said, “What is RISC-V?” or “who are you?”.
In contrast, by this year, everyone knows about RISC-V, students and large and small corporations alike. We were also a strong contributor of presentations to the RISC-V Pavilion too. And a good thing for us here at Codasip is that most people seem to also know us as a leading RISC-V IP provider.
Codasip is also no longer a well-kept secret, and we were well sought out by customers, partners and the media. Whether it’s our technology, or because of all the recruitment activities, it’s evident we’ve created a lot of interest. (And yes, we are still hiring, check out our open positions.)
If someone wasn’t sure what Codasip does, they most probably do after this week. Our customizable, low-power L31 embedded processor was awarded an Embedded World Best in Show by Embedded Computing Design magazine and the strong team on the Codasip stand was demonstrating our capabilities in delivering low-power embedded AI. In addition, we announced Apple macOS support in Codasip Studio, plus secure boot for Codasip processors, in collaboration with Veridify, and our friends at XtremeEDA and Crypto Quantique announced secure deployment using Codasip IP.
What was the buzz from the show floor?
Well, one company in security software whose offering is partly based on standards driven by Arm said they were expanding into RISC-V, because their customers wanted easier migration from Arm to RISC-V. In contrast though, another security software company said that for them they were not yet ready to support RISC-V based on the limited number production RISC-V devices in the field. But given the interest in RISC-V that would change in time. The industry is definitely at a tipping point – the RISC-V genie is out of the bottle!
Also, we heard an opinion about RISC-V compiler quality being better than Arm, which is interesting indeed. There’s a long way to go, but with a rapidly growing ecosystem delivering a plethora of customizations and optimizations using the open RISC-V ISA, and with better tools on top of that, RISC-V is outstripping expectations and increasingly we think RISC-V is really starting to keep Arm and other established ISAs awake at night.
