Design West San Jose, April 22 to 25

Design West 2013 will be going on April 22 to 25 in San Jose's McEnery Convention Center. There will be keynote speeches each day at 10:30 a.m., including, on Thursday, Hugh Herr, who heads the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab. He focuses on developing physically assistive technologies that will be intimate extensions of the human body — structurally, neurologically, and dynamically. A double amputee himself, Herr is the holder/co-holder of 14 patents related to assistive devices.

There will be 250+ exhibitors vying for your attention with the hall open at 11:30 a.m. each day and closing at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, and 4:00 p.m. on the final day. Here are a few interesting products that you might want have a look at.

Altium will demonstrate the new Altium Designer 2013 unified electronic design software release in booth 1738. The package has enhanced features and opens up the platform to partners, creating a range of new opportunities. The company will also show Altium Vault Server technology, which provides advanced design data management capabilities.

Microchip Technology (Booth 1116) will be demonstrating what it claims is the world's first analog-based power management controller to integrate an MCU for more flexible and efficient power conversion. The MCP19111 digitally enhanced power analog controller is a hybrid device that works in combination with Microchip's MCP87XXX family of MOSFETs to support configurable, high-efficiency dc/dc power-conversion designs. The hybrid integration provides the flexibility of a digital solution, along with the speed, performance, and resolution of an analog-based controller.

The MCP19111 digitally enhanced power analog controller.

VIA Embedded Platform Division in booth 1724 will show you their VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board. The industry standard 10 x 7.2-cm board combines the Freescale i.MX5 processor with a rich I/O set and high-performance multimedia, supporting playback of video formats up to 1080p. It is said to deliver the highest I/O integration on the Pico-ITX form factor.

Icon Labs will have its Floodgate Defender — a compact industrial firewall that provides protection from cyber attacks for industrial, military, and critical infrastructure equipment. 

The Floodgate Defender industrial firewall.

The unit is easily configured with communication policies customized for the device it is protecting. Floodgate Defender provides stateful packet inspection and rules-based filtering.  

Texas Instruments will demonstrate several solutions based on TI's Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor, including BeagleBone, the Smart Data Concentrator evaluation module, and the Enterprise Tablet reference design from AllGo. BeagleBone will run Ninja on a 46-in. touchscreen LCD, showcasing graphics capabilities and responsiveness.

TI's little BeagleBone board be showcasing big graphics capabilities.

TI's new Smart Data Concentrator evaluation module supports quick connectivity to more than 1,000 smart meters. The Enterprise Tablet reference design runs on the Android 4.1.2 JellyBean OS and offers a cost-optimized tablet solution for logistics, retail, healthcare, hospitality, and education.

McAfee will show you Embedded Control — said to be the industry's first-ever whitelisting security solution for Android-based embedded systems. It's also the only security solution that resides inside the Android kernel. Being embedded in the operating system means McAfee provides protection from the installation or execution of a malicious application. McAfee also provides protection at the application layer to Android devices.

For more on Design West 2013, visit http://events.ubm.com/event/1945/design-west-2013.