Embedded systems are becoming increasingly complex as engineers are creating smart systems that integrate real-time computing, edge analytics, connectivity, and high-performance storage solutions. As systems are becoming more complex, traditional infrastructure solutions are no longer able to meet the needs of rapid test and deployment cycles associated with embedded systems development. This is where Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is revolutionising the world of embedded systems engineering.
Understanding Hyper-Converged Infrastructure in Embedded Development
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure integrates virtualisation for computing, storage, and networking in a single entity that is controlled and managed using software development tools. With HCI, engineers are able to run an environment that is highly automated and unified, which is essential in making the development and testing of embedded systems faster and easier using software tools.
How Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Improves Embedded System Testing
- Rapid Environment Replication
Embedded system testing is required to test multiple configurations of the system, which means that multiple versions of the system are required for testing purposes. With HCI, engineers are able to replicate entire test environments in an instant.
- Scalable Test Data Handling
Embedded systems generate huge amounts of data that are required to test and validate the system’s performance and functionality. HCI provides scalable storage solutions that can grow without modifying the underlying architecture.
- Continuous Integration and Continuous Testing
Modern embedded systems require CI/CD pipelines to ensure that the system is tested continuously throughout the development and testing process.
With HCI and advanced software development tools, engineers are able to automate the CI/CD pipelines that are required in the development and testing of modern embedded systems.
- Enhanced Debugging and Failure Analysis
With a centralised platform, teams can collect comprehensive test logs, power state changes, and hardware interaction events. This significantly reduces the time required for failure analysis during the development process.
Role in Embedded Deployment and Production Scaling
In addition to testing, a hyper-converged infrastructure can significantly simplify the deployment of embedded software.
The benefits of using a hyper-converged infrastructure in the deployment of embedded software include:
- Centralised firmware distribution management
- Secure update pipeline validation
- Production-scale simulation
- Fast deployment of the application across a distributed network of embedded devices
For organisations with thousands of IoT or industrial devices, a hyper-converged infrastructure can help in ensuring the performance of the deployment process while reducing the complexity of the operations.
How Silarra Technologies Enables Advanced Embedded Testing and Deployment
Silarra Technologies has extensive experience in systems engineering for embedded systems and advanced storage environments. The organisation enables the development of embedded products by providing a comprehensive platform for embedded validation and deployment.
The engineering expertise of Silarra Technologies involves full lifecycle ownership of the project. The organisation provides the necessary engineering expertise for hardware architecture, firmware optimisation, firmware validation, and release readiness. This enables organisations to significantly reduce the cost of maintenance in the long run. Furthermore, the organisation can help in the efficient deployment of embedded products. By combining the expertise of storage engineering with embedded system validation, Silarra Technologies can help organisations build a reliable embedded system development environment in line with the latest in hyper-converged infrastructure.
The Future of Embedded Development Infrastructure
As embedded systems continue to evolve into new areas such as artificial intelligence edge computing, connected industrial automation, and high-performance IoT ecosystems, not only is the technology getting more interesting, but so is the infrastructure that supports it. Hyper-converged infrastructure is going to be a key part of a new world of distributed testing, remote validation, and predictive maintenance testing.
Conclusion
Hyper-converged infrastructure is changing the way we test, validate, and deploy embedded systems. With hyper-converged infrastructure, we are able to bring compute, storage, and networking together to accelerate our testing processes, deploy scalable validation environments, and simplify our production deployment processes.
For embedded system engineers, hyper-converged infrastructure is a way to leverage their expertise to improve their development processes while ensuring long-term reliability in their products. As embedded systems continue to evolve and become more complex, hyper-converged and automation-friendly infrastructure models are going to be critical to success.
