After more than 20 years in the process industry, I transitioned to the embedded community. This shift felt akin to what Sting sang about in “Englishman in New York”: like being a “process engineer in embedded”. For over two decades, I had been deeply familiar with fieldbuses, predictive maintenance, Industry 4.0, modular automation, safety and security, and AI.
Now, I encountered these same topics in the embedded computing market but from a much more fundamental technological level and entirely new perspectives. Unfamiliar challenges, technologies, and use cases awaited me. Despite being an experienced electrical engineer, everything I knew suddenly seemed different. Previously, my focus was on the application; now, it centered on the foundations of all solutions – the Computer-on-Modules.
In this embedded world, I had to deal with completely different technologies and technical terms. While I had previously concentrated on system architectures, signal quantities of process plants, cycle times of process stations/control systems, and networking of plant supply chains, I was now engaged in discussions about processor architectures, COM form factors, cloud connectivity, and a processor’s TOPS (trillions or tera operations per second) for AI workloads.
I quickly realized that the community often lacked in-depth knowledge of these fundamental topics and other crucial technologies such as security, functional safety, system consolidation, and real-time capability. Many terms were simply not well-known. There was a lot to learn, and this experience made me recognize the importance of sharing basic knowledge with the community. It’s not just about knowing the technologies but truly understanding them – what they are, why they exist, and, most importantly, their purpose.
And what platform is better suited for sharing such foundational knowledge than a blog? This brings us to the first topic for this blog:
What is a blog?
Before electronics and GPS, a ship’s speed was measured using a wooden log. Attached to this log was a line with knots tied at regular intervals. As the log floated in the water, the number of knots the ship passed within a certain time indicated its speed in knots. This was recorded in the so-called logbook, along with weather conditions and any important or special events – a practice that continues today. A (b)log serves a similar function: to concisely present all important information. And where does the “b” at the beginning of the word come from? You probably already guessed it: it comes from “web”. Because everything is shortened on the web, the term was derived from “weblog”.
This is precisely the path we aim to take here: to record and share with you the important topics from our journey through the ocean of embedded computing and to keep you updated on the latest developments in embedded computing technology. Visit our blog regularly and join us on this voyage into the megatrends of our era.
