The success story of Linux – a free, open-source operating system for anyone to work on – began over 20 years ago. These days, Linux is the leading operating system for embedded devices. Calista Redmond now wants to repeat this success story with open-source hardware. Since March 2019, she has been CEO of the RISC-V Foundation, which is forging ahead with an open-source instruction-set architecture. This is envisaged to enable anyone to develop, manufacture and sell processors without being liable for licence fees. In an interview with the Future Markets Magazine, the business graduate and -experienced manager came across as a staunch advocate of open-source systems.

Even before starting out as an executive at the foundation, she had already overseen various open-source initiatives at IBM, among other things. While there, she learned how the roll-out of new technologies can be accelerated by collaborating with other organisations. As a co-founder of as many as four successful start-ups, she also knows how to work well together with numerous stakeholders – experience that made her ideally equipped for taking the helm of the RISC-V Foundation. Redmond is convinced of one thing:

„Open-source hardware can dramatically speed up innovations and open up the playing field for the benefit of the entire eco-system.“

What do you find so exciting about the world of IT?

Calista Redmond: Technology is the single most powerful force to disrupt industries, empower companies and improve the lives we lead. Everyone has a role to play and open source in particular can level the playing field to engage and enable participation.

Before your career at IBM, you were a co-founder of four start-ups. Why make the switch to a large company – and then to a foundation?

C. R.: There is a tremendous level of learning to be realised when you are creating and building a company on your own – from every corner and facet of the enterprise. Likewise, there are honed best practices and discipline that may be gleaned from a large corporation. The grounding principle of both experiences that led me to grow my experience in open source is the impact that can best be achieved through collaboration. An open-source community allows deep collaboration to thrive with shared, longterm strategic interest. Bringing the open-source ideology into hardware is something I’ve been leaning into for many years, and RISC-V is a phenomenal architecture and community to build with.

Why does the industry need open hardware solutions?

C. R.: While open-source software has been around for decades, it has been more challenging to get the industry to collaborate on and adopt open hardware solutions. However, the challenges of hardware design – including development time and costs – are exactly why the industry needs open hardware solutions.

Is working on an open-source -project -different to working on a classic, -proprietary system? 

C. R.: Yes, it’s quite different since you need to take into consideration many additional variables. Open-source solutions have to be suitable for the needs of a variety of companies around the world, all building solutions for a wide range of applications and industries. Interoperability among implementations is much more important for open-source solutions. Additionally, open-source projects rely on community effort to accomplish objectives and goals, which becomes rewarding when you witness a community of like-minded folks huddling up to solve the industry’s most complex problems together. This means that transparency is key and decisions are made democratically instead of in a top-down fashion. At its core, we’re determining the base building blocks upon which many companies may build their businesses.

What does the exponential growth in the use of embedded systems and edge computing mean for processors in general?

C. R.: The computing demands of artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, high-performance computers and virtual and augmented reality have put a ton of pressure on the industry. New computing needs in various power and performance dimensions have increased the overall demand and competition for custom processors purpose-built for specific application needs. Since legacy instruction set architectures (ISAs) are decades old, they are not designed to handle the latest workloads. The RISC-V ISA allows us to start with a clean sheet of paper and optimise designs for new workloads, ushering in a new era of silicon design and processor innovation through open-standard collaboration.

How did the idea of RISC-V emerge?

C. R.: In the summer of 2010, the Computer Science team at UC Berkeley started a project to create their own design architecture. They called this architecture RISC-V, since it is the fifth major iteration of the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) ISA. This project was spearheaded by Krste Asanovic, Andrew Waterman and Yunsup Lee with support from David Patterson, who pioneered RISC architecture in the 1980s. The RISC-V Foundation was founded in 2015 to direct the future development and direction of the RISC-V ISA.

What are the benefits of RISC-V?

C. R.: The RISC-V ISA is an open-source blueprint for general and custom processors that offers all types of companies, big and small, the ability to accelerate innovation.

RISC-V offers a new level of software and hardware freedom on architecture in an open, extensible way. The open ISA delivers easier support from a broad range of operating systems, software vendors and tool developers. RISC-V does not rely on a single supplier – it offers multiple suppliers, supporting unlimited potential for future growth. And finally, no other ISA is designed like the RISC-V ISA, allowing for user extensibility of the architecture without breaking existing extensions or incurring software fragmentation. But those are only some of the key benefits of RISC-V.

What fascinates you personally about RISC-V?

C. R.: Throughout my career, I’ve been proud to be part of a number of open-source initiatives to drive tech innovation and foster industry-wide collaboration. The RISC-V ecosystem is one of the most dynamic communities I’ve seen to date. During the past year, the RISC-V Foundation has seen membership growth of more than 100 per cent, surpassing 420 organisations, individuals and universities from 28 countries and six continents. As the ISA has moved beyond its origins in academia, we are witnessing more and more commercial adoption and implementations across a variety of industries. Most importantly, I truly believe open-source collaboration like RISC-V is driving the future of technology. I’m proud to be helping lead the RISC-V revolution.

What is there to be gained by manufacturers of IoT devices, for example?

C. R.: The RISC-V ISA offers significantly more control over hardware and software implementations. With RISC-V, designs can be optimised for a variety of features like lower power, higher performance and stronger security while maintaining full compatibility with other RISC-V-based designs. RISC-V is making it easier for IoT manufacturers to enable the next generation of IoT devices to process AI information from rich data sources such as image, video and audio, and to develop products with security built in from the start.

How have established chip manufacturers reacted to it?

C. R.: We have reached a critical mass of companies adopting RISC-V and contributing to the ecosystem, including several chip manufacturers. I anticipate we’ll see even more interest from chip manufacturers in the coming years as these companies look to RISC-V to expand their offerings to meet their customers’ needs.

Why is RISC-V so exciting for embedded and edge systems in particular?

C. R.: Companies are reaping the many benefits from the free and open RISC-V ISA. RISC-V unlocks architecture and enables innovation, ushering in new possibilities and applications. With its robust ecosystem, RISC-V accelerates the time-to-market, in addition to reducing risk and investment so that companies can design innovative solutions without a large team or budget. Additionally, RISC-V creates opportunities to create thousands of potential custom processors with its layered and extensible ISA. Companies can implement the minimal instruction set, well-defined extensions and custom extensions to create processors custom-built for the next generation of edge computing devices.

Who is already using RISC-V today? In which applications?

C. R.: The RISC-V Foundation has an incredibly dynamic community with 420 members in different industries: application processors and graphics, commercial chips, consulting and research, development tools, foundry services, FPGA, IP and design services, machine learning and AI, networking, semiconductor IP, as well as software and the cloud. On our website, you can find a list of various cores and SoCs that endeavor to implement the RISC-V specification.

One of your tasks at the RISC-V Foundation is to drive forward the roll-out of RISC-V eco-systems around the world. How far along is this process today?

C. R.: RISC-V has seen strong global adoption, including government-led RISC-V initiatives in China, the European Union and India. In addition to the Foundation-led task groups and activities, there are numerous RISC-V groups and events around the world. Over the next few years we’ll start to see more consumer devices built with RISC-V-based solutions, in addition to HPC systems, servers and other computing machines.

RISC-V – Openness for chip designs

Read more about the RISC-V Foundation here: www.risc.org

The post Interview with Calista Redmond appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.

There are several definitions and attitudes about Edge Computing. “Whoever you talk to will give you a different definition of the edge,” says Dr Felix Winterstein, co-founder and CEO of Xelera. However, Thorsten Milsmann, Director Digital & IoT at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), finds a definition that everyone at the table can agree with: “The edge is everything that is located outside the data centre.” As a result, the participants at the expert discussion are far quicker in defining the term than an expert panel at the Industrial Internet Consortium: “The longest expert discussion that I took part in regarding what Edge Computing actually is lasted two-and-a-half hours. The most expedient approach is probably to follow the definitions from the ‘Linux Foundation’s Open Glossary of Edge Computing’ project,” adds Dr Alexander Willner, Head of the IIoT Center at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, referring to his involvement in the last IIC conference in Europe.

More sensors, more data

In actual fact, Edge Computing is not really anything new, as Dr Johannes Kreuzer, CEO of Cosinuss, emphasises. His company develops sensor technology that measures vital parameters in the ear of the patient. “As early as my doctorate thesis, I wrote about why data analyses have to be performed directly on the patient. Back then, it was simply because we couldn’t transfer the data viably. But in those days, it wasn’t known as Edge Computing.” The reasons for analysing the data on site were the same as today. A continuous transfer of the data would consume too much energy, and also the volume of data would be far too large.

“The data volume is growing mainly on the application side. So we will see a massive growth in the upstream volume in the coming years.”

Dr Felix Winterstein, CEO of Xelera Technologies

“Nowadays, companies are installing more and more sensor technology to monitor the systems and control them more precisely,” explained Ulrich Schmidt, Manager of the High-End Processing segment at EBV. “The data volume increases massively in the process, which in turn calls for pre-processing of the data before it is sent to the cloud.” By processing data on the edge device, you can also gain a certain amount of independence from the Internet or data connection to the cloud – which can be an important argument, for instance in medical technology, as Johannes Kreuzer explains: “In this field, the devices simply have to work reliably, so it is safest to run the data processing and the controls directly on the patient who is wearing the edge device.”

Real-time applications are becoming more common

“What’s more, the proportion of data that has to be processed in real time is rising in parallel to the volume,” adds Dr Felix Winterstein. Aurel Buda, Head of Product Management Factory Automation Systems, confirms this from the point of view of the users: “The industry is constantly aiming to produce more quickly, reliably and flexibly. That is no longer possible with the classic control processes.” He cites automobile manufacturing as an example, where you quickly find several thousand robot cells working away, each fitted with several hundred sensors generating data at a rate of every ten milliseconds. When processing this data in the cloud, with a latency of several seconds, the system would simply not work. According to Mr Buda, these types of processes have to be controlled with decisions taken within 100 milliseconds. Meanwhile, other applications can involve even more extreme requirements – Dr Winterstein gives an example: “In the case of augmented-reality applications with suitable goggles, the data has to be processed within 20 or 30 milliseconds, because otherwise the user begins to feel sick – it’s a simple case of motion sickness.” The computing power to process the data in this volume and at this speed in edge devices is already available today. “Even though you can never claim that we have enough computer power,” declares Felix Winterstein, “we already have a wide range of powerful chips these days, partly to implement AI applications in the edge, in particular.”

“Like any others, edge devices always need to be kept up to date. Admin tools can be useful there, like the ones used in data centres.”

Thorsten Milsmann, Director Digital and IoT at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Although AI is nowadays often mentioned in relation to Edge Computing, the two do not necessarily have to go hand in hand, as Johannes Kreuzer emphasises: “Although there are plenty of overlaps, the data in edge applications is often just analysed with a relatively simple algorithm – which has nothing to do with AI.” The participants at the expert discussion agree that a carefully selected threshold value is often more useful than a neuronal network which has to be trained first – even though the possibilities of AI are genuinely exciting and they are only taking the first steps on the development path. Even so, “with the computing power available to us today, we can run computing models on site that wouldn’t have been conceivable in the past – and in some cases even in real time,” stated Thorsten Milsmann. The learning phase here is still carried out at the data centre, as Ulrich Schmidt stresses: “But the inference, that is, the application of the learned models, is increasingly being carried out on the edge devices.”

Seeking energy-savvy ­controllers

The expert discussion participants see a far greater challenge than the level of computing power available – namely, the amount of energy required. Precisely that is also regularly an issue for Johannes Kreuzer with his sensors: “Our controllers are just two by two millimetres in size, but they are equipped with Bluetooth and a floating-point unit. The computing power is no problem – the challenge for us is the electricity consumption. Particularly because it is simply vital for mobile applications whether the device can run for eight or 24 hours before it needs recharging.” The important factor here is that the system must be able to work with a standard cooling element despite the constantly increasing computing power – a fan would quickly drive the energy consumption up and would introduce a component into the system that requires maintenance, as Ulrich Schmidt explains: “One solution would be dedicated hardware blocks that are each designed for specific applications. By moving away from the generalistic approach, you can reduce the loss of power.”

“There are more and more devices that also generate more data – so it is only possible to process the exorbitant increase in data volume with Edge Computing.”

Dr Johannes Kreuzer, co-founder & CEO of Cosinuss

Cybersecurity and the Edge

However, Dr Alexander Willner explains that latency requirements and exploding data volumes are not the only drivers behind Edge Computing: “In Europe, and particularly in Germany, we often don’t want our data to be distributed in the cloud – ­bearing the GDPR in mind.” In this case, the issue of data security involves far more than “just having your hard drive in your own cabinet,” as Thorsten Milsmann puts it. “As soon as there is a wireless connection or a device is connected via IP, you immediately need a comprehensive security concept.” For Aurel Buda, it is already adequately feasible today to ensure security with a data connection: “In terms of communications, we already have encryption. Maybe it could still be possible to improve the usability with the certificate management, but that already gives us secure communications per se.” On the other hand, he considers it far more problematic when existing systems are made intelligent and are connected to the IoT. For instance, when existing industrial systems are modernised to enable condition monitoring or digital maintenance. “In industrial automation networks, there are very few technologies that are seriously secure.” After all, in the past they were not networked and not connected to the Internet, and so they were intrinsically secure. However, Mr Buda does not think that it would be affordable to implement secure communications with encryption for every connected sensor – and it might not even be necessary: “Who is really interested in a sensor value that is communicated every 100 milliseconds and hardly changes at all? In contrast, it is important to ensure that that is actually the correct value from the sensor – that it hasn’t been corrupted.”

“We are rising to the challenge of bringing data from the field to the cloud with minimal effort.”

Aurel Buda, Head of Product Management Factory Automation Systems at Turck

The semiconductor industry already supplies suitable solutions for that, as Ulrich Schmidt explains: “Secure elements are integrated into the solutions from the outset, and can then be used to set up a secured data connection which guarantees that only authenticated devices communicate with each other.” This also makes it possible to load updates for the edge devices “over the air” and to upgrade them to the latest version of the relevant firmware. In conjunction with intrusion detection and behaviour-oriented security systems, this process could also provide security for edge applications in the industrial environment. “However, we first need to teach the systems what unusual behaviour looks like, and what is right and what is wrong,” stresses Thorsten Milsmann. “After all, the field devices used in automation and their protocols are not yet widely known in the world of IT.”

“Dedicated hardware blocks tailor-made for specific applications reduce the required processing power and so, the energy consumption.”

Ulrich Schmidt, Segment Manager High-End Processing at EBV Elektronik

Data must be transferred from the field level to the ­cloud

It is precisely this meeting of the worlds of production and IT that poses the crucial challenge if we hope to transfer the data gathered in the sensors or ­other field devices to the cloud via the various levels of Edge Computing: “The data exists in different, entirely unstructured formats – but the standardised integration of this sensor data into the higher-level ­systems is already a component of appropriate standardisation work,” ­explains Aurel Buda. For instance, he is a member of the ­corresponding committee that has already standardised the mapping of IO Link, a globally standardised connection technology for sensors and actuators, to OPC/UA. This is an open interface standard for the manufacturer-­independent exchange of production data. The next steps will involve mapping to MQTT, the standard protocol for IoT or M2M communications between devices and applications, or to JSON, a standardised, text-based format for presenting structured data on the basis of a JavaScript object. And this would bring the automation world a huge step closer to the world of IT. Anyway, this gradual growing together is already evident in the operating systems, as Ulrich Schmidt explains: “The further I move away from a sensor to a microcontroller unit, the more frequently I will find ­Linux being used nowadays, particularly because of its additional functions for real-time capability. Microsoft is also trying to gain market shares in the edge sector with ­Windows 10 IoT.”

Calls for standards

“One problem, however, is that we have a totally heterogeneous landscape with the chips,” adds Dr Felix ­Winterstein. “That means it’s no longer possible to write a program and combine it with a compiler so that it will then simply run on every computer. We also have thousands of nodes, of small hardware units, in a distributed system that are definitely not all the same. Even so, the application needs to work on all of these different platforms.” The CEO at ­Xelera sees a role model in the telecommunications sector, showing how it is possible to overcome this challenge. A federation of independent networks there ­allows everyone to make a connection with their smartphone, anywhere in the world. “One of the elements that allows that is the ETSI,” says Alexander ­Willner. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute is responsible for developing pan-European norms, standards and specifications in the field of telecommunications. “This is one of the few standards that we have in the area of Edge Computing, although it is insignificant in the industrial context and will probably not be adapted in the future.”

“In Edge Computing, we have to divide and manage the resources – so we need new management approaches.”

Dr Alexander Willner, Head of Industrial Internet of Things Center, Fraunhofer FOKUS

The specialists at the expert discussion are reasonably hopeful about open-source solutions: “Open-source technologies make it possible to map entire landscapes or development environments that would dramatically lower the entry hurdles for the development of edge applications,” believes Aurel Buda, for instance. Here, Thorsten Milsmann sees a great opportunity to standardise edge applications further and to facilitate their implementation: “With an open standard, it’s not only possible for more operators to use the solution, but also for more people to make a contribution – so you have leverage for distributing edge solutions more widely.” Alexander Willner could even imagine an entire ecosystem of open solutions: “That could start with an RISC-V processor in the edge device, moving on to Linux operating systems and edge middleware, and even going as far as every application.” But Johannes Kreuzer remains sceptical: “On the one hand, every component in the system changes too quickly. And on the other, you simply need specialised chips, such as FPGA or DSP, for many applications.” That makes it extremely difficult to implement a consistent, open solution. Thorsten Milsmann therefore stresses that edge solutions will therefore continue to be implemented in teamwork in the future: “We need partners to build up the infrastructure and for the necessary software stacks, security experts, integrators on site and energy experts – no-one can do it all on their own any more.” That could become an attractive market for service providers and system integrators.

Non-technical challenges as well

This might also be an answer to those who fear that digitalisation will destroy jobs. “With AI applications at the edge in particular, we can automate many tasks more fully than we have managed with automation technology,” says Dr Alexander Willner, admitting certain concerns. He’s therefore in favour of an unconditional basic income, but also believes that many fields of work could, in future, be replaced with new tasks. At the same time, experts agree that this type of automation will be crucial if Europe is to remain competitive as a location to do business, and that AI will even create more jobs than are lost. So Alexander Willner comes to a Socratic conclusion on the subject of Edge Computing: “It will certainly be an exciting, entirely non-technical challenge.”

The post Edge Computing: An expert discussion… appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.

Semiconductors are at the heart of each and every edge solution. However, the requirements for embedded systems differ considerably from those of computers or servers, as stressed by Antonio Fernandez, Vice President Technical Development at EBV. Yet according to him, semiconductor manufacturers are offering more and more solutions that have been specifically designed with edge computing in mind.

How do you define Edge Computing at EBV?

Antonio Fernandez: We understand Edge Computing as the infrastructure needed to implement high-performance data processing and storage close to the place where it is needed. At the edge of the network, near the data source. The application of artificial intelligence via the Internet of Things, the need of real-time performance with low response times, the need to preserve critical data privacy and reduce communication bandwidth for the massive amount of data produced by all the distributed sensors are key drivers in the demand for and evolution towards Edge Computing.

Will Edge Computing replace cloud computing or will both coexist?

A. F.: There will be a move from centralised IoT in the cloud to distributed IoT with Edge Computing; but both will coexist. Edge Computing will reduce the amount of data sent to the cloud and will reduce the latency of the network, improving response time. Edge solutions will enable safe, smart decisions in systems while they are not connected to the cloud and can improve data-privacy handling. The cloud will become much more sophisticated, managing massive volumes of data in real time. In the context of artificial intelligence, learning and big-data storage will happen in the cloud, while machine-learning sensing, inference and action will happen more frequently at the edge. Therefore, the edge will not replace the cloud; rather, it will complement it.

What is the role of embedded technology in that context?

A. F.: Embedded systems used in edge computing have special requirements that are different from personal computers or data-centre servers. They need to be compact, highly integrated, with several secure connectivity capabilities and interfaces to communicate with sensors and actuators. They have to be interoperable with other systems and need the right balance of computing performance and power consumption. The embedded technology must be robust and reliable enough to support specific environmental conditions and must have remote administration, monitoring and control. They have a convergence of computation, storage and network capabilities in common.

How important are semiconductors for embedded technology and especially for Edge Computing?

A. F.: The core of Edge Computing comprises the application processors, either as a stand-alone or integrated into FPGAs or application-specific devices. You also need memories for data handling and storage, interfaces, power management, timing, networking peripherals, etc. Using state-of-the-art, competitive, green and reliable semiconductors is essential for edge computing.

What are the main developments in semiconductor technology with regard to Edge Computing?

A. F.: The new generation of ARM application processors made with a 28-nanometre process offers higher performance, more peripheral integration, even including GPU, lower power consumption, higher reliability and very competitive prices. The pace of development, from FPGAs to systems-on-chip and adaptive compute acceleration platforms (so-called ACAPs) realised with cutting-edge 7-nanometre technology, offers capabilities that were previously out of reach. Their hardware and software are optimised for parallel heterogeneous computations and the integration of smart engines for AI, in addition to advanced digital signal processing.

In which areas is there a need for further development of hardware? Which trends do you see at your hardware suppliers?

A. F.: We are still missing the integration of machine-learning inference engines as a standard peripheral, but that is coming with a new generation of processors. Most of our hardware suppliers are getting ready for Edge Computing. The latest memories are matching the performance of the latest application processors, solid-state storage is meeting the cost target of the market, and peripherals are becoming highly optimised for latest-generation processors.

What is the role of software in this topic?

A. F.: Edge-Computing hardware without the proper software is useless. Software is the key enabler for getting the most out of the new peripherals, for exploding real-time processing, for implementing complex communication stacks, for realising security at the highest level and for ensuring interoperability between different systems. We even have software partitioning with cloud stacks, edge stacks and software stacks. They all need to work together with precision and reliability. Fortunately, there is an entire software ecosystem supporting the new design challenges, and a relevant part of the offering is free open software.

How can EBV support its customers in Edge Computing? What are your services and solutions?

A. F.: We are working very closely with our manufacturing partners to bring the latest technologies to the mass market in multiple applications and geographies. We have technical expertise in hardware and software that enables us to provide our customers with technical advice in product selection, live demonstrations, workshops and deep technical support to accelerate product development, solve technical problems and design for successful manufacturing.

What challenges are faced by manufacturers who want to make their products smart and equip them with Edge Computing capabilities?

A. F.: They will need to take care of security, interoperability between multiple connectivity and networking standards, real-time processing, remote management and reprogramming, and find a proper balance between computing performance, integration, cost and power consumption.

What role do open structures play in the further development of edge solutions? Where are the advantages?

A. F.: The latest open-hardware platforms and open-software ecosystems offer new levels of transparency, sustainability and cost reductions that benefit both the system manufacturer and the end user without compromising quality and reliability. It is a collective responsibility to enhance the tools so that everyone can benefit from the developments.

How will the market for edge solutions evolve? What are the big drivers?

A. F.: The market for edge solutions will grow very quickly as a consequence of the expansion of the Internet of Things empowered by Artificial Intelligence. We can imagine that, together with an increasing number of sensor and actuator nodes, there will be a large-scale deployment of smart gateways implementing Edge Computing due to several benefits. Firstly, it will reduce the volume of data going to the cloud and improve bandwidth. Secondly, selected data and insights flow to the cloud as required by data-protection laws. The third benefit is the possibility of near-real-time decisions and actions independent of cloud connections, thus, reducing unproductive waiting time. And, last but not least, intelligence incorporated into physical things and systems can give the user more added value.

The post Interview with Antonio Fernandez from EBV appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.

Dr Charles Stark Draper was born in 1901 and graduated from Stanford University in 1922 with a bachelor’s in Psychology. He then switched to MIT, where he first gained a BSc in Technical Electrochemistry in 1926. Then in 1928, an MSc in Physics. Finally, he went on to earn his PhD in Physics in 1938.

Learning from practice

In spite of his undeniable technical genius, Draper was anything but a mere theoretician or a nerd. This much was already clear when he started his studies at MIT. He was surely the only student who took his professors flying on a plane to discuss the problems of aerodynamics with them. But, not only that. He was also a ballroom dancer, a boxer and a basketball player. Even when he became a professor at MIT and ultimately founded the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory in 1940, he continued to stick by his conviction that it was impossible to teach advanced engineering using books alone. Students should also be required to solve practical problems.

During the Second World War, he applied this philosophy to design a system that employed gyroscopes to stabilise anti-aircraft artillery. After the war, he worked with colleagues to develop the gyroscope-based “inertial guidance system”. During a test flight in 1953, this navigation system safely guided an aircraft from Boston to Los Angeles. Without using external landmarks for reference and without any pilot input. Through this navigation system, Draper became known as the “father of inertial navigation”. In fact, Draper was on board the flight, which was typical behaviour for him. He had full faith in his developments and always preferred to gain first-hand, practical experience of them.

Maximum motivation

This was also true for the Apollo mission’s guidance system. In an ultimate vote of confidence, Draper volunteered to fly to the moon using the system developed at his institute. He wrote a letter to NASA that said the following: “I realize that my age of 60 years is a negative factor in considering my request, but … I will gladly undergo any physical examinations and tests that may be prescribed and will take any courses of training that may be recommended.” Naturally, his request was turned down, and Draper never flew into space. Yet this letter reflects the extraordinary commitment showed to his technologies. This quote is also attributed to him: “We at the Instrumentation Laboratories are going full throttle on the Apollo guidance work. … If I am willing to hang my life on our equipment, the whole project will surely have the strongest possible motivation.”

Draper was not only known for his talent in motivating his colleagues, but also for his leadership style. He assembled some of the brightest minds of the age at his research institute, which brought extremely well educated – albeit very diverse – people together in one place. Additionally, he was known for setting tasks that brought them well out of their respective comfort zones and exposed them to new experiences. He wanted colleagues to find out for themselves exactly what they could contribute to the tasks. At the same time, he gave them a long leash. His colleagues had the opportunity to test the water in various fields and subjects until they found somewhere they felt comfortable. In doing so, he provided space for each individual to be creative.

The world’s first embedded system

Within a relatively short period, Draper did indeed manage to produce a flawlessly functioning navigation system for the Apollo mission. From an electronics perspective, the real triumph of this achievement was the on-board computer, which could not be any larger than one cubic foot. This brief sent designers back to the drawing board, although they did make use of the integrated circuits that had just been launched onto the market. The computer featured a keyboard that the astronauts could use to ask questions and enter data. It performed its tasks reliably despite having astonishingly small storage capacity by today’s standards. Nowadays, this master computer is considered to be the world’s first “embedded system”.

With his “learning by doing” philosophy, Charles Stark Draper’s career mirrors one of the fundamental shifts in 20th-century science: the transformation of academic theory into (business) practice. Since 1988, in recognition of the weight of Draper’s achievements, the US National Academy of Engineering has been awarding the Charles Stark Draper Prize, one of the most prestigious honours for engineers and somewhat akin to a Nobel Prize in these disciplines. This distinction is given to recognise innovative engineering achievements that contribute to the welfare and freedom of mankind.

The Apollo Guidance Computer – the first Embedded System

The post The Apollo Guidance Computer appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.

Six start-ups with Edge-Computing Power:

PCB layouts at the push of a button

AI software for the edge

A personalised audio experience

“Seeing” like a bat

Effortlessly ­reducing heating costs

Energy-efficient environmental perception

The post Edge Computing – Start-ups to follow! appeared first on Future Markets Magazine.