The Embedded Systems Seminar 2008, hosted by EDN Asia kicked off yesterday morning with an opening address by the Editor-in-Chief of EDN Asia Kirtimaya Varma. He said that while countries such as China and Taiwan have large numbers of design houses, Singapore alone has 40. Singapore, he added, "has an advantage over other countries in analog and mixed signal designs”. Most countries continue to focus largely on digital designs, he said. Kirtimaya also highlighted the fact that Singapore has a complete electronics ecosystem to facilitate the necessary undertakings in the electronics industry. Keynote speaker at the conference was Dr Thambipillai Srikanthan, Director for High Performance Embedded Systems (CHiPES), Nanyang Technological University, who delivered a CHiPES overview on architecturecentric algorithms and design methodologies for embedded systems. Industry challenges 
Dr Sri touched on the challenges of the embedded system (ES) design industry, which includes the fact that designs here attempt to optimize multiple (sometimes contradictory) objectives such as performance, costs power consumption, size, reliability, security, non returning engineering (NRE) costs and time-to-market (TTM). He said that these "constraints have to be met”. He added that while customization is an essential driver for the proliferation of embedded systems, a high degree of programmability is necessary to lower NRE costs and shorten TTM. It was important not "violate TTM and NRE”, according to Dr Sri. Other aspects Dr Sri touched on include IP creation at CHiPES, customizable platforms of embedded computing, voice authentication, and hardware routing algorithms for dynamic navigation. Several other deliveries were made throughout the day by representatives from Telelogic, Tektronix, Wind River, National Instruments, and Wavecom. Each dealt with a specific area of ES, and provided fruitful insights to the industry, the challenges, and the availability of solutions to address challenges. | 
