Technology Review for 2021: year-end results & promising markets for electronics & software development

This year, technology companies worldwide were forced to adjust their plans, shift to remote working, and focus on the most promising areas to overcome the challenges posed by COVID-19. Our electronics development house was no exception. Relying on market analysis and customer requests, we have been actively developing four key market segments that will remain our priority in 2021:

1. Adaptive computing systems based on AI, FPGA, DSP algorithms, ASIC, and SoC

In this area, we have been designing hardware for devices and modules based on FPGA by Xilinx, Intel, Microchip, and Lattice. Also, we have developed for our customers DSP algorithms and firmware for ASIC and SoC.

In 2020, Promwad entered into partnership agreements with Xilinx, Intel, and Lattice. We expanded our engineering team and mastered several development tools of the major FPGA and SoC vendors.

Our engineering team used the RFSoC, RISC-V, 12G-SDI solutions in their designs. We have also started using PolarFire SoC, a recent solution by Microchip. And now, we are studying and applying AI and neural networks in embedded devices. We believe that this will be one of the most promising trends for 2021.

2. Telecom and networking equipment

We have expanded our current Microchip (ex. Microsemi) switch product line by adding the new SparX-5 series, making it possible to implement the TSN function in new devices with little effort.

In the area of wireless access points, the WiFi 6 standard with speeds of over 2 Gb/s is gaining popularity. We offered our clients a rapid development of WiFi points supporting this technology.

As for the L3 access switches with the WiFi 6 support, the bandwidth of the gigabit ports must be increased to 2.5 or 5 Gb/s. We are developing a line of such switches based on the Marvell AC5X chips. This new series provides 24 or 48 RJ-45 ports with 2.5 Gb/s and four uplink ports with 25 Gb/s bandwidth for each port.

3. Automotive electronics

We started the year with a high bar for implementing a software test library for IP cores applied in the automotive industry to ensure their compliance with the ASIL-D ISO26262 standard.

Our engineers have been working on new multimedia IVI systems running Embedded Linux and Android. We have finished the design and testing of a gear selector, and now our customer is launching production of several hundred thousand automatic gearboxes for minibusses. Another exciting area for our customers is the design of electronics and charging stations for electric vehicles.

During this challenging year, many of our partners survived the crisis, but in early 2021 they will launch new products created by our engineers: multimedia systems, dash cams, speed limit indicators, navigators, GPS trackers, and many others.

4. Set-top boxes and digital television (DTV)

We are continuing our traditional DTV projects — STB designs and software development for the broadcasting industry. This year, we have been working with operators in Europe, Asia, and America. Here are some examples of our projects:

Hardware and software development for the Broadcom + Linux platform.
Optimization of the graphical subsystem for the Broadcom + RDK platform and further integration of the Flutter framework.
Development and publishing apps on the Android/iOS/Tizen/WebOS markets.

The development of Smart TV/Mobile applications and backend services will be one of our main specializations in 2021.

Also, we have signed partnership agreements with many active market players:

Chip vendors, namely AMLogic, Broadcom, Montage Technology.
Software platform developers, such as RDK, Vewd, and others.

In addition to our primary service model, we have invested our efforts in developing two internal products: Shoppable TV, an in-video shopping service, and Watch Party service for video conferencing via set-top boxes and joint video viewing.

For more news on the latest R&D activities of our engineers, follow our case studies and social media.