The Week In Review: IoT

Tools
Mentor Graphics rolled out a tester for thermal reliability of electric and hybrid vehicles during power cycling. The tester is the first of its kind.

Deals
Rambus signed a deal with Eurobank Poland for a cloud-based mobile payment system. The deal involves Secure Element in the Cloud software from Bell ID, which Rambus acquired in January. Eurobank Poland has more than 1 million customers using host care emulation technology.

Mentor Graphics reports that Silicon Laboratories chose its Analog FastSPICE Platform to verify Internet of Things intellectual property. “We have stringent circuit verification and noise analysis requirements for our low-power custom analog, RF, and mixed-signal circuits for our IoT SoCs,” said Ramin Poorfard, vice president of technology at Silicon Labs, citing circuit verification accuracy, performance, simulation time, and capacity as the key factors in making a choice.

Advantech selected Semtech’s LoRa technology to provide long-range radio-frequency connectivity with its M2.COM sensor platform. M2.COM combines a microcontroller, networking capability, and wireless technology with a standard interface for sensors. Such platforms could be used for agricultural moisture sensors, intelligent wireless controllers, outdoor wireless sensors, sensing/tracking devices, and wireless measurement sensors.

AutoGrid Systems, which offers the Energy Internet suite of applications, received more than $20 million in Series C-2 funding from such investors as E.ON, Energy Impact Partners, Envision Ventures, and Envision Energy. The company will use the money for development of Energy Internet and to increase its marketing and sales in North America, Asia, and Europe.

Market Research
Gartner named Zeidman Technologies as a “Cool Vendor” in a new report, “Cool Vendors in IoT ‘Thingification,’ 2016.” Also tabbed for the coolness distinction are Espressif Systems, TinyCircuits, and Zentri.

Research and Markets has a new report, “Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) for The Internet of Things,” which analyzes of the use of real-time operating systems in IoT, such as hard vs. soft RTOS and embedded RTOS software for rugged electronics. The report has forecasts for 2016-2021 embedded RTOS-related revenue, such as microcontrollers, rugged hardware, and software. Companies mentioned in the report include ARM, Mentor Graphics, and NXP Semiconductors.

Events
The Internet of Things World conference, held this month in Santa Clara, Calif., hosted more than 10,100 attendees over three days, a 74% gain in attendance from a year ago and compared with fewer than 1,000 attendees in 2014. The 2016 event boasted more than 150 sponsors and exhibitors. IoT World next year is scheduled for May 16-18, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center.