IoT & Embedded Technology Blog




Embedded World 2023: VDC’s “Embeddy” Award Winners

by Dan Mandell & Chris Rommel | 3/28/2023



Last week, VDC Research attended the Embedded World 2023 conference in Nuremberg, Germany and held dozens of face-to-face meetings with exhibitors. Following a barren 2020 and relatively muted attendance last year, Embedded World 2023 was a clear indication that this industry is a small step away from back to normal conference and tradeshow attendance and activities. The halls were packed and bustling like times of old, with everyone sharing a sense of relief and rejuvenated appreciation for in-person events, meetings, and connections.

VDC created and named the Embeddy Awards to highlight companies announcing important advances in the IoT and embedded software, hardware, and services industries. The Embeddy is awarded for the most cutting-edge product or service available to embedded software developers and system engineers. Nominees were judged across specific criteria including corporate, technological, and industry significance, as well as the most cutting-edge hardware and software solutions or services.

The 2023 Embeddy Award Winners include:

  • IP: BrainChip Akida 2nd Generation
  • HARDWARE: Eurotech ReliaCOR Secure Edge AI
  • SOFTWARE: 1NCE OS

  • Embeddy IP Winner: BrainChip
    Akida 2nd Generation: Leading up to Embedded World 2023, BrainChip, a commercial producer of ultra-low power neuromorphic AI IP, launched the 2nd generation of its Akida platform to drive provide direct support for the embedded AI processor market, which is rapidly growing, particularly at the far edge. More complex networks like RESNET-50 can be processed by Akida without CPU intervention and the platform supports 8-bit weights to go with existing 4,2,1 bit support. Akida also adds an efficient vision transformer implementation for acceleration and can also handle 3D data for applications like video object detection and target tracking as well as 1D time series data for streaming data on devices with limited memory, battery, and compute resources. Akida features separable spatial temporal convolutions called Temporal Event Based Neural Nets that allow for simpler and efficient AI processing solutions.

    Embeddy Hardware Winner: Eurotech
    ReliaCOR Secure Edge AI: Eurotech, with more than 30 years of experience supplying high-performance edge and IoT hardware and software, announced at the show several new cyber security-certified edge AI solutions for the industrial, energy, and road vehicle markets. Compliant with the IEC 62443 cybersecurity standard, the new ReliaCOR products all prevent unauthorized access and data manipulations through a layered secure architecture protected by a TPM2.0 and always-on, anti-tamper monitor and secure boot. Eurotech launched four new models as part of the ReliaCOR line, including a compact fanless edge IPC and a ruggedized fanless edge server with varying GPU configurations, IoT connectivity options, and cloud certifications.

    Embeddy Software Winner: 1NCE
    1NCE OS: Five years following the launch of its Lifetime Flat connectivity services, 1NCE, a global cellular connectivity and software services provider, kicked off 2023 with the launch of 1NCE OS, an IoT software offering with developer tools and device control for simplifying development and accelerate time to market for connected products. At launch, 1NCE OS features an automated device authentication solution for onboarding, managed protocol translation using open industry standards (UDP, CoAP, LwM2M, AWS IoT Core, Webhooks), advanced remote access to device states and telemetry, network-based positioning of devices, and optimized payload transmission to save on device energy consumption.

    VDC’s full write-up on the event, including major trends and topics of our various conversations as well as other critical corporate and product announcements, is posted here.