Tradeshows Help Make This a People Business—A Look Back at Four 2024 Events

On behalf of our All About Circuits team, here’s wishing all of you Happy Holidays and a Merry Chrstmas! We hope you enjoy your time gathering with your family, friends, and loved ones.

It’s been said by myself and others many times before, but it bears repeating: The industry we’re in is a people business. I mean … I literally said that exactly a year ago. In this era of AI’s ascendency, perhaps it’s an idea that’s more important now than ever.

With that in mind, today I’d like to review 2024 in terms of all the people we had the privilege to interact with in person. Although we live in an era of instant communication and Zoom meetings, there’s a lot you get out of face-to-face. For us in the media, trade shows are among the leading ways we do that in this industry.

Sure, there’s no rule that demands you have to see people in person to cover technology news. But there’s so much to gain about seeing a live demo, getting to shake someone’s hand, and perhaps even meet up for a meal or drinks. Whether it's catching up with old industry friends or making new ones, trade shows keep us connected in ways that can’t be done via an email.

Our All About Circuits team attends and covers a lot of trade shows. In this article, I’ll review (in chronological order) four of the major shows we attended in 2024, who we met with, and the exciting technology news we covered at these events. Links are provided so you can check out each news article.

Embedded World 2024 Was Filled to the Brim With Innovations

Held every year in Nuremberg, Germany, Embedded World, is the premier international trade show for embedded systems and technologies. “Embedded” is such a broad term, but in terms of this show, it’s a major event for all the areas that are key to All About Circuits’ mission, including semiconductors, processors, instrumentation, analog ICs, and many other categories.

Our April 2024 attendance and coverage of Embedded World was a huge success. Our team had a ton of great meetings with key companies. For me, it’s always enjoyable seeing people I’ve known for decades and meeting new people.

Held in Nuremberg, Germany each year, Embedded World is always a-buzz with interesting new technologies and products. I had a ton of great meetings at the show.

Here's a snap shot of some of the interesting people and companies we met with at the show, and the news we covered based on those meetings.

• AMD extended its Versal chip line with two new adaptive system-on-chip (SoC) processors. The Versal AI Edge Gen 2 series and Versal Prime Gen 2 series were designed to provide high performance for edge-embedded computing devices with AI requirements and high workloads in general. We met with AMD’s Manuel Uhm to discuss the SoCs.
• Renesas announced a new family of entry-level MCUs that offers “best-in-class” power consumption figures. The RA0E1 Group MCUs are built on a 110 nm, low-power process and implement an energy-efficient Arm Cortex-M23 32-bit core. We spoke to Renesas’ Ueda Masashi and Seraphin Sepa Bikek about the new chips.
• Silicon Labs released a new family of wireless SoCs and MCUs, including the MG26 multiprotocol SoC, the BG26 Bluetooth LE SoC, and the PG26 MCU. We met with Silicon Labs’ Matt Maupin to talk about the new devices.
• At NXP’s booth, we met with Sujata Neidig and Charlie Ice to discuss the company’s new MCX W series of wireless microcontrollers. The series securely supports multiple wireless protocols, including Wi-Fi, Thread, Matter, Zigbee, and BLE.
• Not to be left out, we also caught up with some key embedded software companies at the show. Here’s a roundup covering news from Green Hills, LDRA, and Tasking.

We’re already gearing up for Embedded World 2025, running March 11 - 13, in Nuremburg, Germany. Hope to see you there!

Sensors Converge 2024—All Things Sensors in Silicon Valley

Running in June each year in Silicon Valley, Sensors Converge is a key tradeshow covering sensors and everything sensor-adjacent. The show brings together a community of not just sensor providers, but also vendors of things that sensors connect to, including MCUs, FPGAs, and more.

Dale Wilson, our All About Circuits director of engineering did an outstanding job leading our in-person coverage of Sensors Converge. He packed in over 30 booth visits in just a couple days.

At TDK’s Sensors Converge 2024 booth, a representative demonstrates to Dale how they use acoustic waves to transfer power and data through solid metals.

Here’s a summary of our coverage of this show:

• At TDK’s booth, Dale conversed with the company on a variety of topics, including TDK’s new InvenSense Sensor Partner Program and a new MEMS microphone. Here’s our article covering both news items. Dale spoke, not only to TDK representatives, but also to members of the new partner program, including Pooja Bhadrappanavar from Renesas.
• Gowin Semiconductor announced a new SRAM-based FPGA, the GW5AT-15, with hard-core MIPI interfaces built into the device. Dale sat down with Gowin CEO Jason Zhu at Sensors Converge 2024 to learn more about the new FPGA.
• Ceva introduced the Ceva-NeuPro-Nano family of self-sufficient neural processing units (NPUs). The NeuPro-Nano is an NPU IP set designed for third-party processor manufacturers to integrate it into their SoCs or MCUs. Dale talked to Chad Lucien at Ceva’s booth to learn about the new NPUs.
• And, finally, here’s a nice roundup by Dale, highlighting what he found most interesting at Sensors Coverage, beyond what was covered separately on All About Circuits.

We’re looking forward to Sensors Converge 2025, June 24-26, 2025 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Brand New Embedded World North America Debuts in Austin Texas

Old timers in the industry like myself remember well the rise and fall of embedded systems tradeshows in the United States. During the heyday of the 1990s, the Embedded System Conference started small, grew big—at its height it filled the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. But then it faded away, while in Germany the Embedded World show (see above) remained strong and growing.

This year, the Embedded World folks decided to launch a North America version of Embedded World, with the hope of igniting a strong embedded show in the USA. Running in October in Austin, Texas this year, the show was an impressive success, especially for a first time event. I enjoyed attending the show, and our All About Circuits technical editor, Abby Garfinkle joined me there as well.

Abby and I had our schedule jam-packed with meetings with companies both large and small.

TrustInSoft CEO Caroline Guillaume (left) with All About Circuits' editor-in-chief Jeff Child at the 2024 Embedded World North America in Austin, Texas.

Here’s a selection of some of the news from this event:

• At the show, Austin-based startup Driver AI officially emerged from stealth mode, unveiling an AI-powered platform designed to streamline the time-consuming process of onboarding engineers and creating technical documentation. We were pleased to meet with Driver AI CEO Adam Tilton, and Driver AI co-founder and CTO Daniel Hensley.
• Efabless released its ChipIgnite ML custom system-on-chip (SoC) development platform. The platform targets custom chip development for remote sensor applications that require machine learning (ML) AI functionality. Efabless exes Mohamed Kassem, Co-founder and CTO, Jeff DiCorpo, Senior V.P and General Manager met with us at their booth.
• At the Pico Technology booth, technical applications engineer Ben Ellis spent time with us telling us about the company’s newly announced MSO (Mixed-Signal Oscilloscope) versions of its PicoScope 3000E Series. Ben said the new MSO models offer the same powerful features as the existing 3000E series, with added digital channel capability, making them ideal for testing and debugging mixed-signal embedded systems.
• Analog Devices made a significant announcement at the show, unveiling its CodeFusion Studio software, a comprehensive development platform designed to simplify and accelerate embedded design for the “intelligent edge.” At their booth, software engineer James Ryan gave us the details on the new platform.

Next year in 2025, Embedded World North America will come to Anaheim, California, from November 4-6, 2025. Hope we’ll see you there!

Electronica 2024 Marks Show’s Impressive 60th Year!

Last, but literally MOST—in every way—is Electronica 2024. Hitting its 60th birthday this year, the massive show boasts around 80,000 attendees from 100 counties and 3,480 exhibitors from 59 countries. For our part, EETech Group, All About Circuits’ company, had a bigger and better booth this year.

Running in mid-November in Munich Germany every two years, Electronica was a huge success for our team. We had 17 people from our company at the show. With a mix of scheduled meetings and impromptu drop-bys, we saw an impressive mix of technologies and products all across the electronics industry.

Our thanks to every company and every person we interacted with, whether it was talking with us, letting us take cool pics, or just making a connection on the show floor or at dinner events. 

Despite a busy schedule for all of us at Electronica 2024, one morning we did manage to get this group pic of our entire EETech Group team.
 

Here’s just a small taste of our news coverage from this year’s Electronica.

• At a press breakfast at the show, Onsemi announced its new Treo platform, an advanced and modular analog and mixed-signal system. It blends diverse functionalities—power management, sensor interfaces, and communication subsystems—within a single modular architecture. I got to meet and talk with Vijay Rentala, vice president and CTO of Onsemi’s analog and mixed signals group.
• ScioSense launched the LTDC-X3, a two-channel, time-to-digital converter (TDC) for LiDAR systems. According to the company, this compact device tackles the core challenges in LiDAR performance, footprint, and power consumption. I got to talk to ScioSense's Norbert Breyer about the TDC.
• Our great All About Circuits writer Jake Hertz was also at Electronica. He sat down for a great interview at Synaptics’ booth. Jake talked to Neeta Shenoy, vice president of corporate marketing, and Nebu Philips, senior director of strategy and business development for IoT/edge processors. As reported in Jake’s article, the interview provided an in-depth look at their 2024 achievements and their vision for the future.

At Synaptics’ Electronica booth, Jake Hertz (left) sat down to interview Synaptics’ Nebu Philips (right) and Neeta Shenoy (not shown). Images used courtesy of Synaptics’ Instagram

• Lake Shore Cryotronics released a new source measurement unit (SMU) at Electronica 2024. The company designed the SMU-10, an extremely low-noise, high-sensitivity measurement system, to operate in the ultra-low voltage regimes of sub-nanoscale and 2D nanomaterial semiconductors. I was pleased to meet with Lake Shore Cryotronics' Chuck Cimino to discuss the SMU.
• Meanwhile, Nordic Semiconductor released three new wireless SoCs at Electronica. the nRF54L15, nRF54L10, and nRF54L05. These chips offer microcontroller processing and support for a broad set of 2.4-GHz wireless communications protocols. At their booth, Nordic Semiconductor’s Pawel Kanafek discussed applications for the SoC series.
• Finally, I dedicated one morning at Electronica to walking around Hall A3, the test and measurement hall. There, I collected news on new products from Rohde & Schwarz, Keysight Technologies, and Siglent. My thanks to R&S’s Jithu Abraham, SIglent’s Chris Armstrong, and Keysight’s Gabriele Baldassarre and Edward Boland for taking time to talk with me, and for the photo ops. Here’s the article.

We’ve begun counting the days until the next Electronica event two years from now in 2026!

Thanks to All the People We Met With in 2024

All About Circuits is a community, and the broader industry of electronics and technology is too. We appreciate all of you, readers and industry supporters alike. Here’s wishing you Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Looking forward to another great year in 2025. Maybe we’ll see you at one of these great trade shows!

Unless overwise specified, all images were taken by the All About Circuits team.