MONS attends the Embedded Tech Trends event organised in Austin, Texas

This month, MONS was invited to participate in the event Embedded Tech Trends (ETT) event organised in Austin, Tx, organised by VITA. The ETT event creates the opportunity for media and industry to meet face to face and discuss the latest in embedded computing developers in target vertical markets on the application of system, board, and switch fabric technologies.

The first day included a number of presentations that gave an interesting picture of the market at present. IHS Markit began with a presentation on market trends and indicated that the VME and VPX market was mostly driven by the US defence market, as the biggest defence budget of the top ten defence spenders. The presenter also shared IHS Markit’s belief that although VPX applications are now increasing, VME will remain the main system in use throughout the military.

This is in large part due to the combination of the quick obsolescence of the VME components and the long time frames necessary for defence programmes to get implemented. “All branches of the military are faced with forced upgrades regularly on their systems,” says Ethan Plotkin, CEO of GDCA, “and this creates the issue of having to make a case for a new system, which may not be a priority at that point in time, therefore defence forces have to choose to upgrade.“

Time is of the essence also in terms of buying new embedded systems. LCR Embedded Systems indicated that Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products are key in relation to embedded systems as they allow customers to find a compromise between purchasing products that fit their requirements but that have already been tested elsewhere, therefore not having to wait for research and development.