For readers who attended National Instruments’ NIWeek 2015, congratulations. You and about 3,200 others now have first-hand experience of good Texas cuisine, three 100-degree Austin days, and input overload. Three 90-minute keynote addresses, 282 technical sessions, and an exhibition area with about 100 NI Alliance partners kept you busy.
The sessions were organized into two groups. Technical tracks covered automated test systems, data acquisition systems, embedded systems, and software development techniques. Industry summits included aerospace and defense, Internet of Things, energy, 5G, semiconductor test, transportation, and vision.
The major themes addressed this year were Big Analog Data and the Internet of Things (IoT) as well as the Industrial IoT (IIoT). What’s the difference? The IIoT is engineering-driven—you wouldn’t connect a Wi-Fi-enabled hamburger to the IIoT just because you could.
To make sure the broad picture was presented regardless of the sessions you might attend, the first two keynotes each highlighted 10 real-life examples. On the first day, the discussion of NI technology was more technical—Embraer’s increased use of simulation, a huge 400-FPGA seismic experiment undertaken by ETH Zurich, and Innovari’s interactive energy platform that helps to manage loads as well as interface to alternative power sources.
On the second day, the examples had a larger element of connectivity and communications with NI co-founder Jeff Kodosky forecasting 50 billion IoT devices by 2020. Dr. Andrea Goldsmith, the Stephen Harris Professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, was one of the experts who discussed communications. She forecast that 5G would enable automated factories, remote surgery, driverless cars, and real-time personal health monitoring—all examples of what could be accomplished with a very reliable, fast, large-capacity network.
In another example, Ruckus Wireless steered Wi-Fi beams to users via the company’s BeamFlex + smart antenna array—in fact, to 70,000 individual users at a recent sporting event. The company uses 35 NI test systems based on the vector signal transceiver. And, PTC’s Mike Campbell involved communications at several levels when he demonstrated how the company’s ThingWORX IoT platform merged real-time sensor data from an actual mountain bike with a 3D CAD model of the bike.
Sessions
Continuing the communications theme, a 5G panel session lead by NI’s James Kimery included Dr. Goldsmith; Dr. Robert Heath from The University of Texas at Austin; Dr. Amitava Ghosh, head of North America Radio Systems Research for Nokia; and Farooq Khan, president of Samsung Research America. As in the keynotes, 5G’s greater capacity, lower latency, and higher bandwidth were cited. How these goals will be achieved and at what cost were actively debated.
Khan emphasized the need for a low-cost solution to put 5G within reach of billions of people in developing countries. However, as Dr. Goldsmith commented, the mm-wave technology required to implement 5G is expensive. During one of the keynotes, Dr. Ghosh and Nokia’s Mark Cudak demonstrated a 2×2 MIMO mm-wave link that achieved 10 Gb/s over a 200-m range at 73 GHz—the current state-of-the-art.
The fundamental question for 5G is whether service providers can make money by implementing it. IoT already is happening without 5G, and Dr. Goldsmith suggested that low-power Bluetooth could address cost-sensitive markets. 5G is required for the most advanced applications such as autonomous cars and augmented reality.
Another session highlighted a few of the future standards. 802.11ay is intended to facilitate work in the 57-GHz to 64-GHz unlicensed band to determine the feasibility of mm-wave over short distances with a 100-Gb/s peak data rate target. 802.11ax is a high-efficiency multiuser MIMO standard that succeeds 802.11ac with a goal of 4x throughput improvement.
Competing 3GPP technology has not stood still. LTE release 12 has been completed, and work has started on release 13. Release 14 will mark the beginning of 5G standardization with a 5G workshop being held later this year.
In addition to NI’s RF modules and AWR design software, the company has introduced the Wireless Test System—a second production-ready test system following on last year’s launch of the Semiconductor Test System.
A panel session addressed the traditional separation of design/verification, laboratory characterization, and production test within the semiconductor design-to-test flow. Generally, the physical locations, the people, and the test tools used in the three activities are different. The objective is to use similar IP throughout the flow, which will help to determine the root causes of issues found in any one area.
Digital designs have fewer problems than analog mixed-signal designs, which typically are not as well documented. Ken Potts from Cadence presented the concept of an executable specification—a specification organized and formatted so that testing can be completely automated. As an example, testing automotive infotainment systems must move beyond just the ICs to verifying functional safety. With about 100M lines of code in cars, automated test is the only practical solution.
Including virtual test instruments at the design/verification phase ensures that tests will be constrained by the instrument performance available during production test. Test programs will find reuse, and replicating and analyzing failures will become more straightforward.
A look at the future
NIWeek traditionally closes with an upbeat, futuristic view of opportunities that you can address using NI technologies. Mickey McManus, president, CEO, and principal of Maya Design, impressed upon everyone just how big the change is that’s underway. With a trillion interconnected IIoT devices, he said, you will be living in “a sea of information—the new primordial soup.”