Subscribe
Register now (free)

The fifth edition of the Bits&Chips System Architecting Conference is organized as an online event series (9 online sessions) and a live event on 22 June 2022 in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. After summer, we have 4 more free online sessions coming up.

Through an inspiring program, this event always brings together system architects to share successful and failed development cases in both high tech and civil engineering.

Sponsors

ASML event logo
Logo high tech institute hti
Sign up as sponsor

Powered by

Partner

Event BC logo Bits&Chips
Event Mechatronica&Machinebouw logo

Registration online event series 2022

On this page you can register for the online sessions of the System Architecting Conference 2022. Access to all sessions is free of charge. Interested in access to the full video archive (including all presentation videos of 2021 and 2022)? Contact events@techwatch.nl for more information. 

PROGRAM ONLINE EVENT SERIES 2022 – PREVIOUS SESSIONS

Videos online event series 2021 & 2022

In 2021 and 2022, the Bits&Chips System Architecting Conference was also organized as an online event series.

Take a look at the program of 2021 here. If you want to have access to our video archive, please contact events@techwatch.nl for the possibilities. 

Video archive

PROGRAM LIVE EVENT | 22 JUNE 2022 – ‘S-HERTOGENBOSCH

Program live event - 22 June 2022

9:30 -10:20

KEYNOTE

Johan van Rosmalen & Bilal Akdeniz (Heijmans)

Infrastructure embraces operational technology

10:20 -11:00

Break

11:00 -11:30

Jeroen de Boeij - Kulicke&Soffa Liteq

Jeroen de Boeij (Kulicke & Soffa Liteq)

Liteq 500 for advanced packaging or how to build a litho stepper with a lean team

11:30 -12:00

Marc Hamilton (Capgemini)

The coordinating role of model based systems engineering in setting up high-performance engineering systems

12:00 -12:30

Tiemen Schuijbroek (Ratio-Computer Aided Systems Engineering) & Sjoerd Knippenberg (Eindhoven University of Technology)

A product platform to support Rijkswaterstaat with upcoming development, renovation and replacement of (semi-)standardized locks

12:30 -14:00

Lunch

14:00 -14:30

Jose Lorenzo Alvarez (ESA)

The engineering of the James Webb Space Telescope European Instruments: challenges, lessons learned and successes

14:30 -15:00

Bryan de Goeij (TNO)

TROPOMI: from a kitchen table idea to a world-renowned atmospheric chemistry instrument

15:00 -16:00

Break

16:00 -16:30

Gaston Weijenberg (Vanderlande)

Reuse of Adapto warehouse storage solution in an airport platform – approach and challenges of architecture refactoring

16:30 -17:00

Harry van der Velde (Shell / INCOSE Nederland)

INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2035

17:00 -17:15

INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2035 – discussion

17:15

Drinks and dinner

About

System architecture (and systems engineering) are distinguishing disciplines in the development and commercialization of complex systems, products and machines. The system architect’s decisions can make or break a product. A system architect needs to be a good communicator and problem solver, because he or she is in charge of the development of a system architecture. However, the system architect should also have technical knowledge from different kinds of disciplines.

Experience is an important factor, but the system architect can also learn a lot from his peers. Exchanging lessons learned from successful and failed development cases is invaluable to sharpen his mind. 

Target audience

The target audience consists of all involved in the development and commercialization of complex products and machines:

  • System architects
  • System engineers
  • Technical management
  • Decision makers of complex-system companies
  • Product managers

Sponsorship opportunities

Sponsoring the System Architecting Conference could be a great component of your marketing strategy. Get a bigger ROI out of the conference and be part of the promotion media mix (mailings, advertising, social media, content marketing and PR).

Want to become a sponsor of the event? Contact us via events@techwatch.nl for a customized package.

Keep me informed

We are Techwatch

At Techwatch, we can handle all of your marketing and content needs for the high-tech industry.

We offer content services, organize (online) events (and offer them as a service) and we create and host webinars, podcasts and videos.

Techwatch logo web 234px

Events

At Techwatch, we offer virtual solutions for remote events. We facilitate webinars, training courses, lectures and network sessions.

Techwatch organizes its own events and conferences for the high-tech industry. Additionally, we help you with organizing your event. An event is a great way to promote your product, company or organization.

Magazines

Techwatch is a full-service media platform and publisher of two magazines: Bits&Chips (English) and Mechatronica&Machinebouw (Dutch).

Have a look at the mediakits for more information, like circulation profile or the editorial calendar.

Contact

Techwatch bv
Transistorweg 7H
6534 AT Nijmegen
The Netherlands
T +31 24 3505544
events@techwatch.nl

Chamber of Commerce 09102339
VAT number: NL807783109B01

#BCSA

Events Software-Centric systems logo
Events Industrial 5g Conference logo
Events Digital Twin conference logo
Events High-Tech Systems logo
Events System Architecting Conference logo
Events Machine Learning Conference logo
events Idea to industry logo
Event logo Benelux RF Conference
Contact us
Bits&Chips Sustainability Conference

A practical presentation on the how of design for sustainability

Jeroen Rondeel, Managing director, Blue Engineering

Design for sustainability is a competence in every engineering practice in the next few years. In his presentation Jeroen will give you a roadmap for how to get to an organisation that has sustainable product design or processes in its bones. Jeroen will talk about the tools that are available and every engineer should be trained in. He will explain why a focus on total cost of ownership also means that you should design a sustainable product. In short, he will give you practical information for the how of design for sustainability.

Jeroen Rondeel has 26 years of experience in product and production development in various industries. He studies at the Radboud university of Nijmegen and did a masters in aeronautical engineering. Jeroen founder of Blue Pasma and managing director of Blue Engineering, an engineering company with a focus on sustainability.

RF2021 logo cropped

Hands-on GaN Doherty amplifier design

Although we have been developing RF power amplifiers for more than a decade, it does not grow old and the challenges remain. This talk will take you through the paces of a Doherty amplifier development process with all its pitfalls and hurdles. Using newly developed GaN devices as example, the flow will be illustrated step by step, sharing experiences in designing these amplifiers for 5G basestation applications in the 3.5 GHz band.

Martijn Brethouwer is a senior RF application engineer at Bruco Integrated Circuits. He has more than four years of experience in developing Doherty amplifiers. Before joining Bruco IC, he worked two years at Astron as an RF engineer. He holds an MSc degree in electrical engineering from the University of Twente.

RF2021 logo cropped

The role of photonics for 6G and beyond wireless communications

Although we don’t know exactly how wireless communications will look like beyond 2030, we may assume that we will most likely communicate using holograms and digital twins, and that the merge of real and virtual reality has happen in an hyper-reality internet. Such new ways of communications will demand a large capacity and ultra-low latency. Developing technologies to exploit the terahertz frequency spectrum to implement terabit data capacity wireless links seems a futuristic endeavor. This talk considers the role of photonics in tackling the challenge to realize systems to generate, detect, multiplex and process terabit volumes of data in wireless terahertz systems.

Idelfonso Tafur Monroy is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of Eindhoven University of Technology. He is a principal investigator in the Center for Quantum Materials and Technology Eindhoven (QTE), the Institute for Photonics Integration (IPI) and the Center for Wireless Technology (CWTE) and co-founder of the Center for Terahertz Science and Technology (CTSTE). He performs and supervises research on the convergence of electronics and photonics technologies for applications such as THz communications, sensing and imaging. More recently, he and his team are setting up the Eindhoven test bed for quantum secure communications, as part of the national Dutch program Quantum Delta.

RF2021 logo cropped

Mm-wave CMOS as low-cost fiber alternative for 1Gb/s at home

The promises of 1Gb/s+ cellular data connectivity made by 5G network roll-outs is confronting fixed network operators with the risk of being left behind. As a consequence, the capability of an operator to offer a stable, affordable and ubiquitous 1 Gb/s internet connection is now no longer considered the holy grail but the next step needed to stay competitive. Early deep-fiber roll-outs show that high customer interest and retention are not enough to build a viable business with nation-wide availability, even when wireline technology is used for the final curb to home connection. By introducing wireless CMOS mm-wave technology in the network, a more favorable split between up-front and at-signup installation cost is achieved and a much wider range of neighborhoods can be serviced. This talk presents some of the technologies and methodologies used to build a carrier-grade 60 GHz product for the fixed-wireless access market with a fully integrated CMOS transceiver phased-array IC at its core.

After obtaining his MSc and PhD at KU Leuven, Carl De Ranter began his career at RF Magic, an RFIC Startup in San Diego, CA. There he worked on terrestrial and satellite TV tuners and became design manager to help build the start-up ahead of its merger and IPO. In 2013, he returned to Belgium to join design services house Ansem where he architected NFC and RFID front-ends. From 2015-2019, he consulted for a tier-1 smartphone chip supplier where he built the team that developed front-end RFIC IP shipping in over 100 million mobile phones. In 2019, he co-founded Pharrowtech, an Imec spin-off that develops mm-wave CMOS radio hardware and software for next-generation wireless applications.

RF2021 logo cropped

Surfing on the 6G communication waves using heterogeneous integration technologies

While 5G is being rolled out, 6G is already on the horizon to further increase wireless data rates up to 100 Gb/s for new applications such as 3D holography. These high data rates are best accommodated in wide frequency bands above 100 GHz, such as the D-band (110-170 GHz). So far, the functionality of wireless transceivers has been mainly implemented using downscaled CMOS, which allows a high integration complexity while featuring very fast transistors. Today we have come to a point where CMOS downscaling no longer increases transistor speed. In combination with the low supply voltage of nanoscale CMOS, generation of power, especially at mm-wave frequencies, is challenging for CMOS. To generate sufficient transmit power, D-band transceivers will need to resort to non-CMOS technologies such as InP. This talk will discuss how the combination of the antenna array, required for beamforming, the active circuits from different IC technologies (CMOS and InP) and advanced 2.5D or 3D technology can result in a high-performance 6G wireless transceiver.

Mark Ingels received the MSc and PhD degrees in microelectronics from the ESAT-MICAS Laboratories of the KU Leuven in 1990 and 2000, respectively. In 1999, he joined Alcatel Microelectronics, which was later acquired by STMicroelectronics, and worked on the integration of ADSL analog front-ends and Bluetooth RF transceivers. He joined Imec in 2005 and is now a principal member of technical staff in the Advanced RF research group working on mm-wave transceivers for future communication systems.

RF2021 logo cropped

Mm-wave OTA validation and test – do you really need a chamber?

5G/6G wireless communication data bandwidth will get a large boost when we can efficiently exploit mm-wave and sub-THz frequencies that allow us to transmit over large contiguous bandwidths. To transmit at these carrier frequencies, engineers use active antenna arrays with beam steering to overcome the high path loss. Testing and validating these actively steered antenna arrays and beam steering algorithms is complex and expensive, often involving large chambers and over-the-air (OTA) measurements. This talk provides an overview of the different validation and test options for mm-wave active antenna array modules and related research and technology challenges. It will present NI’s current innovation activities around OTA measurements and discuss potential solutions to many of the challenges, enabling lower cost and thus broader adoption of the 5G/6G frequency bands.

In 1990, Marc Vanden Bossche received the PhD degree from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in electrical engineering focusing on the foundation of high-frequency large-signal network analysis. In 1991, he established a Hewlett-Packard R&D team in Belgium continuing to work on characterization and system-level modeling tools for high-frequency non-linear electrical components, leading to the expansion of the capabilities of VNAs beyond S-parameters. In collaboration with NIST, a phase calibration standard was established in the second half of the 90s, merging network and signal analysis. In June 2003, Vanden Bossche founded NMDG, which was acquired by NI in October 2012. At NI, he and his team introduced vector calibration techniques into the NI RF production test systems. Presently, he is technically leading the accurate characterization effort under modulation conditions at NI and scaling these efforts for over-the-air characterization.

RF2021 logo cropped

Load-pull techniques for 5G and 6G applications – state of the art and future

This talk will discuss the architecture of state-of-the-art load pull measurement systems for 5G and 6G applications. It will highlight the challenges involved in characterizing devices, circuits and systems for next-generation wireless applications, which pose very stringent requirements in terms of in-band (eg EVM) and out-of-band (eg ACPR) distortion. Application examples will be presented, including high-speed load pull for technology evaluations and power amplifier design, and modulated testing for 5G applications. Finally, a procedure will be described for evaluating traceable uncertainty in load pull measurements.

Mauro Marchetti received the BSc degree (cum laude) and the MSc degree (cum laude) in electrical engineering from the University of Naples “Federico II,” Naples, Italy, in 2004 and 2006, respectively, and the PhD degree from Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands, in 2013. In 2006, he joined the Electronics Research Laboratory at TU Delft where he carried out his PhD research on the development of advanced characterization setups for RF high-power and high-linearity amplifier design. In 2010, he co-founded and was appointed CEO of Anteverta, a company providing pioneering solutions in the fields of device characterization and high-performance power amplifier design. In 2015, Anteverta was acquired and became part of Maury Microwave. His research interests include the development of advanced characterization setups for RF high-power and high-linearity amplifier design.

RF2021 logo cropped

Advanced behavioral modeling methodology for complex front-end system analysis

The fast and ever-increasing demand for high-speed data services has been motivating and leading to define the next generation of telecommunication systems. To take advantage of this opportunity, methods and techniques to design RF and MW subsystems must continue to evolve to meet the requirements that include spectral and energy efficiency and, on the other hand, to reduce costs and time to market. To deal with these challenges, important works have focused on modeling and simulating front-end designs to allow analysis and optimization at a system level. This talk will present a comprehensive methodology to extract a black-box model of a power amplifier for two application examples: the evaluation of linearization techniques and the front-end design of an advanced antenna system.

Wissam Saabe is an application engineer at Amcad Engineering. He received the Master Research degree in electronics and optics for telecommunication from the University of Limoges in France in 2013, and is currently working towards the PhD degree at the Research Institute on Microwave and Optical Communications XLIM, University of Limoges. His research interests are non-linear analysis and behavioral modeling of RF and microwave circuits and subsystems.

RF2021 logo cropped

Performing quick thermal analysis of electromagnetic designs towards the optimal system-in-package sign-off

Millimeter and sub-millimeter waves are nowadays being widely adopted within a variety of applications developed across the high-tech industry, including high-resolution automotive radar sensors, but also the fifth and sixth generation mobile communications RF front-ends. These applications primarily consist of a system-in-package tightly integrated with radiating elements to ensure adequate electromagnetic performance. Managing the design of such devices is particularly challenging from a manufacturing capabilities and related tolerances point of view, as the size of the metallic features shrinks with the frequency increase, but also due to the fact the power densities significantly increase, potentially leading to thermal issues. As such, RF IC package engineers not only need to accurately predict the electromagnetic performance of their implementation but also need to assess adequate thermal dissipation of these complex devices starting from early phases, driving their decisions towards the best system-in-package design sign-off. This talk will showcase solutions aimed at addressing these multiphysics simulation needs.

David Prestaux Ansys RF
David Prestaux is a principal application engineer for Ansys, supporting customers in Europe to use high-frequencies software. He has more than twenty years of experience in numerical analysis and promotes methodology and the usage of simulation tools for virtual prototypes. From nanoscale component to full system, he worked with the most innovative companies to deliver with the help of electromagnetic simulation. Microwave components, packages, PCBs, filters, antennas, arrays and integration analysis are among the applications he covered. He also interacts with development and product management on improving HFSS simulation software. Prior to joining Ansys, he graduated from ESIGELEC engineering school in France and worked in the US and the UK for Ansoft and Framatome.
RF2021 logo cropped

The linear power challenge for future 5G massive MIMO mobile communication systems

With the current roll-out of 5G telecommunication infrastructure systems and especially with the new massive MIMO architecture and the opening of the higher sub-6 GHz frequency bands, the RF power amplifier architecture and technology have gone through a major transformation. The roll-out fueled and accelerated the technology developments and large advancements have been made at all levels such as power efficiency, linearity, bandwidth and integration. However, the next and future steps in 5G LTE networks, necessary to fulfil the growing demand of wireless communication, prove to be even more challenging. This talk sketches the progress that has been made so far, as well as the future trends and challenges from an RF power amplifier point of view.

Fred van Rijs holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Delft University of Technology. In 1992, he started at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven on advanced silicon technologies such as SiGe HBTs. In 1999, he moved to Philips Semiconductors in Nijmegen, later NXP Semiconductors, initiating pHEMT technology for the next-generation CATV linear power amplifiers and was responsible for the development of LDMOS technology for base station RF power amplifiers. Currently, he is working at Ampleon on technologies required for future RF power applications.

BC-Event logo rgb

Yes, Agile short cycles also work in high-tech development

Developing innovative high-tech equipment is a daunting challenge, especially for startups and scale-ups. Solid systems engineering and lots of organizing are required when working with partners from different fields of expertise (which is almost always the case). Generating new ideas and validating them in your next prototype can take a lot of time. And there is always the risk of drowning in specifications, procedures and organizational issues. But your engineers want to engineer! The solution? Do it Agile! Surprisingly, an Agile approach with short development cycles will also work in high-tech development. The key is taking smaller steps, dividing the components into really small functional units, which can be either software, programmable logic, electronics or mechanics. Next, project partners quickly build and develop these units in a parallel process or they can employ third parties such as prototyping services to do this. Finally, hardware and software units are integrated into a working prototype, ready to be tested. This way, the short cycles generate quick and frequent feedback on product feasibility. With an Agile approach to high-tech development, it becomes much easier to keep the focus on the technical development of the next prototype. It allows all partners to concentrate on building the best possible components. This talk will highlight the advantages of Agile high-tech development, using as an example real-life cases, such as the development of crucial components for a multi-beam scanning electron microscope.

Remco Jager is a project manager at Technolution Advance, a company that supports startups, scale-ups, and leading innovative manufacturers to bring advanced, innovative ideas to market quickly. Building upon 18 years of experience with the development of solutions for the semiconductor industry, Jager realizes cutting-edge innovations for a wide range of customers in high tech. He has a broad and detailed technical understanding and a talent for creating overview and shaping processes.

RF2021 logo cropped

RF engineering for quantum technology: massively scalable signal generation and I/O

To move quantum computers from the proof-of-principle stage towards real-life applications, many engineering challenges need to be overcome. Amongst these are the generation and routing of control signals. As most of the platforms require signal frequencies between DC and 20 GHz, these challenges are for a large part RF engineering challenges. The fundamentally sensitive nature of qubits drastically complicates these: qubits need to be placed at ultralow temperatures (<< 1 K) and control signals require extremely precise timings (<< 1 ns), low signal noise, distortion, drift and crosstalk. Qblox and Delft Circuits work precisely on these topics and provide quantum computer developers around the world with their state-of-the-art control technology. This talk starts at the level of the quantum bits to understand their control needs at a fundamental level and goes up into the stack layer by layer to discuss challenges in the cabling (Delft Circuits), the control electronics (Qblox) and the digital infrastructure for feedback (Qblox).

Jules van Oven holds a BSc and MSc degree in physics from Delft University of Technology where he graduated in the group of Lieven Vandersypen on the development of reflectometry setups to speed up the readout of spin qubits. After graduation, he became the lead engineer of Innoseis, responsible for the development of a wireless sensor network for seismology applications. From 2016-2018, he rejoined Qutech as an electrical engineer, within the lab of Leonardo DiCarlo. He was part of the team that developed the Qutech Waveform Generator and the Central Controller, specifically designed for fault-tolerant quantum computing. At Qblox, he’s responsible for R&D, operations and works with CEO Niels Bultink on sales and IP growth.

RF2021 logo cropped

How we changed the world using silicon-based phased arrays: leaving the Marconi era and entering the directive communications era

Affordable phased arrays, built using low-cost silicon chips, have become an essential technology for high-data-rate terrestrial (5G) and satellite (satcom) systems because of their high gain, electronically steerable patterns, narrow beam widths, high tolerance to interference and adaptive nulling capabilities. They have also become the backbone of all LEO and MEO satellites (non-geostationary), both at the payload level and at the user terminal. High-EIRP, high-performance systems at X, Ku and Ka-bands and 60 GHz with analog and digital beamforming capabilities and with multiple beams are now available at low cost due to the immense commercial investments placed in the past 5 years. These advances are reshaping our communication and radar/sensor systems, as we work to change our world from the Marconi era given by low-gain broadcast and user-terminal antennas to the directive communications era where every antenna, every beam, every sensor is electronically steered. This talk summarizes our work in this area and presents a roadmap for the future.

Gabriel Rebeiz keynote Benelux RF Conference

Gabriel Rebeiz is Member of the National Academy (elected for his work on phased arrays) and a Distinguished Professor and the Wireless Communications Industry Endowed Chair at the University of California, San Diego. He is an IEEE Fellow, and is the recipient of the IEEE MTT Microwave Prize (2000, 2014, 2020), all for phased arrays. His 2×2 and 4×4 RF beamforming architectures are now used by Renesas, ADI, NXP, Infineon, Sivers, Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung, Boeing and others, and most companies developing communication and radar systems. All satcom affordable phased arrays are based on his work and architectures.

BC-Event logo rgb

Chasing bugs – Using AI (and more) for a production-quality system to count insects on glue traps

How can you truly implement AI-aided solutions on a day-to-day basis? Let us walk you through a successful case of deploying an AI system. Sounds easy: counting flies on a glue trap in a greenhouse. Complexity comes with all interacting components. Think: change management on daily ways of working, enabling a mobile camera to take pictures, data labeling, choosing the right image recognition algorithm, using the phone as an edge device, connecting to a cloud data lake, and creating an app to steer AI-driven actions.

Frank van der Linden is product owner of the Itility AI Factory, steering toward building blocks to deploy and run AI solutions. His knowledge spans across digital transformations, infrastructure automation, data analytics, SRE, as well as horticulture, brewing, crypto and more.

BC-Event logo rgb

High-performance dataflow and in-memory computing architecture for AI at the edge

Recent advances in deep learning have transformed the way computing devices process human-centric content such as images, video, speech and audio. However, the AI technology available today has been designed primarily for cloud computing operations, a sector with considerably less constraints in terms of cost, power and scalability. Axelera AI’s mission is to provide a green (low power consumption) hardware and software platform that enables the industry to take full advantage of what AI can bring. Our technology integrates a custom dataflow architecture with multicore in-memory computing, delivering extremely high performance – hundreds of TOPS – at very low wattage, with flexibility to support multiple networks. This talk will cover today’s challenges to deploy AI at the edge, how Axelera AI is innovating with a disruptive technology for machine learning inference and our vision for the future of AI at the edge.

Fabrizio Del Maffeo holds a master’s degree in (wireless) telecommunication engineering from Politecnico di Milano. From 2014-2019, he was VP and managing director of Aaeon Europe in Eindhoven. As such, he was also responsible for worldwide AI development and worked closely with Intel and its AI subsidiary Movidius to enable an AI ecosystem. In 2019, he joined the Amsterdam-based emerging-technologies expert Bitfury to head its new AI venture. Last July, this venture was spun out as Axelera AI, of which he became the CEO.

BC-Event logo rgb

Life-ready AI is here

At GML, we are in the business of life-ready AI. Artificial intelligence that feels far from artificial. Brain-inspired chips that respond as humans do. GML is proud to be unveiling a future where artificial meets reality with its Grai VIP (Vision Inference Processor). A groundbreaking chip that acts and reacts in real-time, ready for life.

Menno Lindwer is VP IP & Silicon at Grai Matter Labs. He holds a Msc degree from the University of Twente and a PDEng degree in technical computing science from Eindhoven University of Technology. His previous employers include Philips Research and Silicon Hive, which was acquired by Intel. In 2018, he joined AI startup Grai Matter Labs as VP of engineering. Last year, he assumed his current role.

RF2021 logo cropped

The path towards 6G: from millimeter waves to THz

Sub-terahertz and terahertz (THz) waves have frequencies extending from 0.1 THz up to 10 THz and fall in the spectral region between microwaves and optical waves. The prospect of offering large contiguous frequency bands to meet the demand for highest data transfer rates in the terabit/second range makes it a key research area of 6G mobile communication. These efforts require an interdisciplinary approach, with close interaction of high-frequency semiconductor technology for RF electronics but also including alternative approaches using photonic technologies. The THz region also shows great promise for many application areas, ranging from imaging to spectroscopy and sensing. To fully exploit the potential of this frequency range, it’s also crucial to understand the propagation characteristics for the development of the future communication standards by performing channel measurements. This talk will highlight the characteristics of channel propagation in this frequency region and present new results from channel measurements at 158 GHz and 300 GHz.

Fabian Kronowetter is a junior development engineer and PhD candidate at Rohde & Schwarz. He completed his master’s degree in applied and engineering physics in 2019 at the Technical University of Munich. Between 2017 and 2018, he interned in technology development and innovation at Infineon Technologies Austria and Seat. In 2020, he worked as candidate for European Patent Attorney at Grünecker patent attorneys. At Rohde & Schwarz, he conducts his PhD in quantum sensing with a focus on quantum radar applications.

RF2021 logo cropped

Characterization methods for antenna-in-package applications at mm-wave frequencies

Due to the need for ever more bandwidth in wireless communication, the next generation communication standard (6G) is set to operate at frequencies beyond 100 GHz. From an electronic packaging point of view, this will mean a widespread adoption of antenna-in-package (AiP) type of devices where a(n) (phased array) antenna system is integrated directly into the device package. This high level of integration, combined with high operational frequencies, poses several challenges – not only for the manufacturing but also for the characterization of materials and performance of the AiPs. At these high frequencies, material characterization and over-the-air device measurement simultaneously become more crucial and more challenging. For this reason, CITC and Antennex started a collaboration to address the characterization needs for these kinds of packaging applications. Leveraging decades of research and experience from Eindhoven University of Technology, Antennex addresses these measurement issues with a variety of characterization and measurement tools and services that can support the development of novel packaging technologies and concepts at CITC. This joint talk takes a look at the various challenges and needs that occur, and different ways to characterize AiPs and materials at frequencies up to 140 GHz, including miniaturized anechoic and reverberation chambers and material characterization techniques.

Sander Bronckers is an assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology and co-founder of Antennex, a spinoff from TUE’s electromagnetics group, based on measurement techniques research. He also coordinates the ultra-high-data-rate track in the Centre for Wireless Technology Eindhoven. In the past, he obtained a PhD from TUE (cum laude) and was a guest researcher at NIST on reverberation chamber measurements. His research interests include antenna measurements in reverberation and anechoic chambers, channel sounding and emulation, and RF material characterization, with a main focus on reverberation chamber-based measurement techniques in the mm-wave range.

Francesca Chiappini is program manager at CITC – Chip Integration Technology Center, where she leads a research team focusing on packaging solutions for RF chips operating in the mm-wave domain. She has a background in solid-state physics and obtained her PhD degree from Radboud University in Nijmegen. Since 2016, she’s been working at TNO as a researcher in different departments, including Holst Centre in Eindhoven, where she worked on interconnect technologies for flexible and printed electronics.

BC-Event logo rgb

Scaling up in photonic biosensors – applying lessons from the other side

Surfix Diagnostics is an early scale-up, bringing biosensors based on integrated photonics to the market. In this talk, CEO Maarten Buijs will try to convey what lessons he has learned during his corporate career on how to bring deep-tech innovations to the market, and how to apply them to the challenges Surfix is facing.

After drafting the roadmap for biosensors based on integrated photonics for Photondelta in 2020, Maarten Buijs is now the CEO of Surfix Diagnostics. Before engaging with integrated photonics, he was responsible for R&D at FEI in Europe (presently Thermo Fisher Scientific), ASML EUV, Nucletron/Elekta and finally Moba. Prior to that, he worked for 14 years at the Philips Natlab.

BC-Event logo rgb

Developing your own custom chip, is it also within your reach?

You want to stay ahead of your competitors by bringing the best product to the market, at the right time and at the right price point. Developing your own custom chip (ASIC) could be the best strategy for you. With one single-chip implementation, you could boost computational performance, massively cut power consumption and product size, and reduce unit cost. Moreover, ASICs are very difficult to copy, so protecting your IP is relatively straightforward. Despite these obvious advantages, creating an ASIC is often perceived as a difficult process – with development cost and time as the main hurdles. This talk will demonstrate that this perception is often no longer valid. ASIC development is well within reach for many companies, even if they’re not yet acquainted with the process. As director of business development at Imec.IC-link, Bas Dorren will talk from his experience of managing many ASIC projects in a wide range of technologies for a large customer base worldwide. He will explain what it takes to make an ASIC in terms of knowledge, cost and time. And he will make clear what the benefits could be for you.

Bas Dorren spent more than 20 years in various technical and commercial roles of several semiconductor companies. More than 10 years ago, he joined Imec.IC-link, Imec’s ASIC services group. Currently, he manages the business development activities. His team provides flexible turnkey ASIC services, including ASIC development and supply chain services to startups, SMEs and established OEMs, as well as universities, IC design houses and system companies. Dorren holds an MSc degree in physics from Utrecht University and a PhD degree in physics from Eindhoven University of Technology.

Events System Architecting Conference logo

The development process of the Powder Load Tool

The MetalFAB1 industrial metal 3D printing system is recognized in the metal additive manufacturing industry as one of the safest and most productive systems available. After market introduction Additive Industries has continuously been improving the productivity, quality and safety of the system. The development of the Powder Load Tool has contributed to all these aspects by enabling MetalFAB1 operators to load the metal powder which is used in the printing process straight from transport packaging into to the printing system in an automated way. Sven van Iersel will talk about the development process of this tool. While compared to the MetalFAB1 the core functionality of the Powder Load Tool seems relatively simple, the large number of design constraints and boundary conditions have made the story not as straight forward as one might think.

Sven van Iersel is system engineer at the R&D department of Additive Industries. He has been with the company ever since the first series production systems were shipped in 2016. Before that he had a role as research scientist at TNO Automotive. Sven has a background in Mechanical Engineering / Dynamics & Control.

BC-Event logo rgb

Resilience in evolving software systems

Imagine a system that, once turned on, will stay operational for the rest of its life. Hardware parts may break or go obsolete, software components may crash, cyber attacks are part of everyday life and knowledge of the system itself becomes volatile. Critical systems in general are software intensive and have life times of 30 years and longer. Just imagine how such systems should be designed and what challenges we have to conquer. Together with partners, Thales has developed an open architecture (Inaetics) in 2016 that addresses these challenges. Today, a number of areas for improvements have been identified and put on the agenda for the Inaetics Extended project. This talk will present the challenges we need to conquer.

Event BC Rene van Hees

René van Hees worked for several software companies in both the Netherlands and Germany before he started at Thales Netherlands in 2002. In his role of chief software architect, he is responsible for all technological, process, methodology, architectural and innovation-related aspects concerning the development of (real-time embedded) radar sensor software.

BC-Event logo rgb

Opportunities and challenges of high-throughput 3D metrology equipment for semiconductor process control

With the shipment of its first system to a high-end chip manufacturer, Nearfield Instruments proves that the semiconductor market is very much open to innovative solutions for advanced process control metrology. This first product, Quadra, can measure in-line and in great detail (ångstroms) the on-surface high-aspect-ratio (10:1) features of integrated circuits. The company is now scaling up to deliver dozens of its scanning probe metrology systems per year.

Nearfield founder Hamed Sadeghian foresees the Quadra metrology platform to be the basis for several products and product lines. All of them will solve different problems the semiconductor industry is facing to follow Moore’s Law with its ever smaller and 3D features. Nearfield is expecting to deliver its second product line based on the Quadra platform next year. This system will be able to image, non-destructively, subsurface structures with nano-precision.

In this talk, Hamed Sadeghian will highlight the major requirements for developing non-destructive 3D high-volume manufacturing metrology equipment in the semiconductor industry, the architecture of Quadra (including software) and the challenges faced and overcome. He will also address the impact of the system architecture on the outsourcing strategy to the high-tech supply chain.

Hamed Sadeghian received his PhD (cum laude) in 2010 from Delft University of Technology. Four years later, he obtained an MBA degree from the Vlerick Business School in Belgium. He is the founder (2001) of Jahesh Poulad Co., a manufacturer of mechanical equipment.

Hamed was a principal scientist and Kruyt member of TNO and led a team of thirty researchers in nano-optomechatronic instrumentation at TNO in Delft from 2011 to 2018. In 2016, he co-founded Nearfield Instruments and is currently CEO/CTO at this scale-up that recently shipped its first in-line metrology system to a high-end chip manufacturer.

SC2 logo white

Why high process compliance is no guarantee for good software quality

In the automotive industry, Aspice is used for measuring an organization’s capability to develop high-quality software. Companies supplying software to automotive manufacturers  are required to have a minimum maturity level to ensure that they deliver that high quality. Still, having high-quality processes in place and complying with them is no guarantee. To see why that is and what else is needed to assure high quality software, we first need to understand the many different aspects of software quality and the influence they have. In this talk, Ger Cloudt will present a holistic view on software quality using the 1+3 SQM approach, addressing the consequences of high or low quality for each of the four defined quality types.

Ger Cloudt studied electronics at the University of Applied Sciences in Venlo (the Netherlands). At companies like Philips, NXP and Bosch, he has gained more than 35 years of experience in in-product software development across different industries, including industrial automation, healthcare, automotive, semiconductors, security and building technologies. After having developed software for over 15 years, he became a software development manager, leading numerous engineering teams. During all these years, he developed a vision on what really matters in software development, which he has encapsulates in his book “What is software quality?”.
SC2 logo white

Remodeling legacy software

Have you ever considered remodeling your kitchen, while continuing to cook in it? It may not sound obvious, but that’s exactly what this talk is about. Within Kulicke & Soffa, high-tech pick & place machines are developed for the semiconductor industry. For the development of these machines, a software stack is used, the development of which started more than a decade ago. Over the course of years, different machine types were developed from this codebase, which led to a situation where alternative flows are implemented in various areas of the code base. Therefore, the decision was made to group product-type-specific code. Constrained by feature development, that should continue in the same code base. Remodeling while cooking! This talk will take you through the remodeling and the challenges that come with it.
Corné van de Pol is a software architect and trainer at Alten Nederland. This gave him the opportunity to work for a range of companies, including Philips, Vanderlande, ASML and Kulicke & Soffa. He enjoys learning and helping others and with over 10 years of experience as a professional software engineer, he got specialized in agile software development and object-oriented design and clean code.
Erik Onstenk is lead software architect at Kulicke & Soffa Netherlands. He joined Kulicke & Soffa (formerly Assembléon) in 2007. Over the years, he worked on the control software of the entire machine portfolio. His current focus is redefining the reference architecture to better suite recent developments and facilitate future expansions.
SC2 logo white

Developing for safety and security

Software systems have exploded in complexity, leading to an enormous increase in the number of vulnerabilities available for exploitation by bad players. This effects safety as safety and security are inexorably linked. Cars today have one hundred million lines of code, but should we be proud or ashamed? Developing systems that need to be safe and secure will require a shift in thinking away from huge monolithic to minimalistic, component-based that enables components to be fully validated and tested, to eliminate vulnerabilities. This talk explains how we need to change software development to make security and safety the main criteria.
Chris Tubbs is an industry veteran with 46 years’ experience in the avionics, simulation, medical, automotive and software industries. After 15 years in the aerospace industry managing safety-critical systems, he co- founded companies in the simulation and medical-imaging markets in the roles of commercial and managing director. He then spent eight Years in the automotive industry in Germany and the Netherlands as a development and business development manager, after which he joined Green Hills Software in 2008. He was promoted to Director of Business Development EMEA in 2012, since when he has specialized in safety and security.
SC2 logo white

Taking formal methods mainstream

In academia, we refer to computing science. In industry, we refer to software engineering. An engineer is a skilled technician who develops and applies scientific knowledge to solve technological problems. Too often in practice software people must resort to skillful tinkering as opposed to sound engineering. That’s why at Verum, we’ve dedicated ourselves to the development and application of scientific knowledge to solve the technological problems underlying this phenomenon. To meet these challenges head on, we’re developing a language that enables building reactive systems at industrial scale. The language offers built-in verification and allows for reasoning about both the problem and the solution. It’s complemented by tooling that automates every development aspect from specification, construction, and documentation to verification and validation. In this talk, we’ll present what we’ve achieved and what will come tomorrow, when we stop tinkering in software development.
Rutger van Beusekom holds an MSc in mechanical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology. From 1999-2005, he worked as a software engineer at Philips CFT. From 2005-2007, he was a software engineer and team lead at Philips Research. Since 2007, he’s been at Verum, in the roles of consultant, software engineer, team shepherd, architect and CTO, working together with and at ASML, Ericsson, FEI, Philips and other customers.
SC2 logo white

Why you want to create a highly effective engineering environment to unleash your software engineers

Products are becoming more complex, companies are continuously pressured to accelerate their product development process, regulations are becoming more strict, new engineering technologies and methodologies are introduced to the market in a constant pace, software is becoming dominant in the value creation of products. On top of this, the shortage of engineers is becoming a limiting factor for the time to market of products. A paradigm shift is needed in the thinking of companies to address these challenges. Hyper-scaled automation is key to answer these challenges. Steps towards this far-reaching engineering automation have been taken in the development of software for Nearfield Instruments. Focusing on the increase of the value creation per engineer, Capgemini shifted efforts to maximize the results of reasoning, analyzing, validating and verifying the engineering process by applying a range of automation solutions. The resulting environment combines cost-effectiveness with high productivity and high quality and, as a bonus, frees up scarce highly qualified engineers for value creation. This talk will give insight into the benefits an highly effective engineering environment brings to the development of Nearfield’s highly complex probe systems.

Since the beginning of 2019, Arjen van Elteren is lead software architect at Nearfield Instruments. From 2009-2019, he worked as a senior software engineer/architect for the Leiden Observatory . Before that, he was as a software engineer atcompanies such as ASM and HP.

After finishing his study in technical computer science at the University of Applied Sciences in Venlo, Thijs Geurts started his career more than 30 years ago at AT&T Bell Labs in Hilversum, where he was involved in digital transformation projects for at that time the flagship product of AT&T. Following a short period at Océ (1995-1997), working on the new fully digital copiers, he went to Bell Labs, Chicago, USA, for almost four years, leading one of the digital transformation projects. From 2001-2012, he worked for Imtech in many industries, including telecom, high tech, marine & offshore, building technologies and government, focusing on reducing product development costs, improving product quality and speeding up product market introduction. Since 2012, he’s at Capgemini Engineering, leading software engineering programs and developing solution portfolios for various industries, with a clear focus on engineering automation.
BC-Event logo rgb

Managing complexity of high-tech systems – the next generation

The Dutch high-tech equipment builders are all leaders in their markets, owing to their strength to handle the complexity of the systems they create. This talk will discuss how the industry must now prepare for the next levels of complexity, as their systems are getting integrated in complex workflows (effectively becoming systems-of-systems), are including more and more AI and are becoming subject to continuous upgrades. This calls for a new generation of methodologies and ways-of-working, like MBSE (model-based systems engineering) and open-source tooling. In addition, it calls for quickly getting a new generation of engineers up to speed, moving from intricate and outdated documentation to models as means to quickly capture and share the essence of complex systems. And finally, it raises the question how to educate the next generation of engineers to equip them with the systems thinking skills needed to deal with this next generation of complexity.

Event BC Wouter Leibbrandt

Wouter Leibbrandt is science and operations director of ESI (TNO). Before joining ESI in 2016, he was with NXP Semiconductors for 10 years, where he managed the Advanced Applications Lab.

BC-Event logo rgb

Preventing regressions for software changes

What does this part of my software do? How does it behave in different situations? And why does a software change cause a regression in a seemingly unrelated part of my system? Understanding software behavior is becoming more and more essential to handle the complexity of high-tech systems. ESI developed and applied model inference to automatically obtain software behavior models that provide valuable insights. These models can be compared to quickly determine the impact of software changes on the system behavior, and locate potential regressions before the software is deployed. How can this help you?

Event BC Dennis Hendriks

Dennis Hendriks is a senior research fellow at ESI and a part-time researcher at the Radboud University Nijmegen. His research area is software behavior. He makes academic formal methods ready for industrial use through applied research, bringing academia and industry together for win-win collaboration and creating real impact together.

BC-Event logo rgb

The accidental startup – from research project to mass market

In 2005, when Iris Soute together with two fellow students designed an outdoor, interactive game based on the board game “Colonists of Catan,” she never imagined that this small project would grow out into a company selling a product worldwide. This talk will take you along the path that she followed, from the duct-taped prototype to Picoo today.

Iris Soute is the inventor and co-founder of Picoo. Originally trained as a mechanical engineer, she worked for 3 years at Philips as a software engineer. Then she returned to the university to study user interaction design, followed by a PhD in industrial design. Picoo is the result of Soute’s PhD research into interactive gaming solutions for children. Currently, she is CEO of Picoo; she manages general affairs and is responsible for game design, strategic planning and customer relations.

BC-Event logo rgb

Software rejuvenation in a high-tech development environment

At Nexperia ITEC, we already have a 30+ years history in back-end assembly equipment development. This has resulted in a significant large and complex codebase. In the dynamic development environment of ITEC, we started rejuvenating our codebase for more efficient and structured code development. For this, we have started a partnership with ESI in the Bright program. One of the goals is to rejuvenate our codebase by applying innovative tooling to support the software refactoring tasks. This talk will present the activity of automatically transferring visual inspections integrated in the Adat die bonder software application. Since there are many instances of visual inspection tasks connected up to 14 camera positions in this system, the main challenge was to run data-driven code analysis to learn the specific instance of inspection calls in the application. By doing automatic transformations, a serious development speed-up, an improved code quality and a more maintainable code base have been achieved.

Raymond Rosmalen has more than 20 years of experience in the field of machine vision. He studied physics at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and did his PhD on high-energy physics contributing to the LEP experiment at CERN. Currently, he is the machine vision technology architect at ITEC. ITEC develops back-end semiconductor assembly equipment with integrated and standalone machine vision solutions. The main challenge is the increasing quality inspection criteria combined with the increasing system speed requirements to achieve lowest cost of ownership. This requires highly efficient and optimized inspection solutions and a continuous drive to explore new vision technologies.

BC-Event logo rgb

Diagnosis and health assessment for zero unscheduled downtime

Reasoning from the symptoms towards the cause of an unwanted behavior (diagnostics) of a complex high-tech system is a difficult brain teaser – potentially a very expensive one: every minute matters. This talk presents an hybrid AI framework, developed in collaboration with Canon Production Printing, that combines machine data, models derived from the system’s design and optimal tests to quickly pinpoint the most likely cause of the system malfunction. It also sketches how this approach can evolve into predictive maintenance.

Event BC Leonardo Barbini

Leonardo Barbini is a research fellow at ESI working in the areas of probabilistic reasoning and knowledge engineering for diagnostics and prognostics of high-tech systems. His main research interest is developing a set of computational tools that allow humans to quicker resolve machine problems.

Event BC Emile van Gerwen

Emile van Gerwen is a research fellow at ESI. He has a strong industrial background in software-centric high-tech systems. His passion is bringing mathematical sound principles into the jungle of practical system engineering. The areas he worked in include probabilistic decision support systems, error-free event-driven control software and diagnostic reasoners that combine design knowledge with machine sensor data.

BC-Event logo rgb

Technology organization processes: how to transform while keeping the shop open

To keep your competitive edge, you need to innovate, which means to transform your organization to adopt new technologies to perform better in the end. In practice, this is very challenging. What is the added value of the new technology? What processes do you need to create or adapt to capture this added value? What is the impact on your teams and their required skills and mindsets? These are three major questions that you need to address when considering new technology to improve business. At Thermo Fisher Scientific, we are working on using model-based testing techniques to manage the complexity of developing, testing and maintaining the interfaces between software components. These techniques enable via modeling the automatic generation and execution of test cases. At ICT, we are supporting Thermo Fisher Scientific in adopting these new techniques. Thermo Fisher Scientific is a large organization, their software is complex, their market is highly competitive and their customers highly demanding. This talk explains how ICT and Thermo Fisher Scientific are answering the three major questions above. At the end, the main question remains: how do we effectively explore and discover the added value of a technology like model-based testing, the processes and the skills required to succeed?

Julien Schmaltz is a principal consultant at ICT Group guiding customers in the digitalization of their software engineering process. He holds a PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Grenoble, France. Before joining ICT, he was an associate professor in computer science at Eindhoven University of Technology conducting research and education in the field of model-driven engineering with applications to hardware and software systems. Together with universities, he is actively engaged in facilitating the transfer of technology created by academic research to the market through cooperation with students and spin-off companies.

Arjen Klomp is responsible for software technology, integration and test at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Eindhoven. He joined the company in 2017. After his graduation in computer science from the University of Twente, he had various roles in software development, starting as a developer and then growing into architecture and technical leadership roles. In these roles, he worked on a variety of products ranging from high-volume consumer products to low-volume high-tech products. The common thread always was and is to find innovative and better ways to develop software, either with new technologies or quickly adopting new ways of working.

BC-Event logo rgb

The model is the easy part

Many AI/ML/DL projects fail to go beyond the experimentation and prototyping phase. Successful deployment of ML/DL models in large systems requires AI engineering. This talk presents an overview of what else is needed to deploy ML/DL models in production-quality, industry-strength systems.

Jan Bosch is a professor of software engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and director of the Software Center, a strategic collaboration between 17 large European companies (including Ericsson, Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, Saab Defense, Scania, Siemens and Bosch) and five universities focused on digitalization. He also holds a part-time position as professor of AI engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. He received a MSc degree from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and a PhD degree from Lund University, Sweden. His research activities include digitalisation, evidence-based development, business ecosystems, artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning, software architecture, software product families and software variability management. In the startup space, he’s an angel investor in several startup companies.

BC-Event logo rgb

10 ways to make your startup fail

Entrepreneurship is more hyped than ever, but many start companies with limited understanding of what is required to build a successful enterprise. Based on 30 years of experience in starting, advising and investing in companies, this talk shares 10 lessons that were learned the hard and costly way.

Jan Bosch is a professor of software engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and director of the Software Center, a strategic collaboration between 17 large European companies (including Ericsson, Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, Saab Defense, Scania, Siemens and Bosch) and five universities focused on digitalization. He also holds a part-time position as professor of AI engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. He received a MSc degree from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and a PhD degree from Lund University, Sweden. His research activities include digitalisation, evidence-based development, business ecosystems, artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning, software architecture, software product families and software variability management. In the startup space, he’s an angel investor in several startup companies.

BC-Event logo rgb

Truly platform-independent and scalable real-time embedded neural network inference

Easics’ NearbAI technology allows you to configure and optimize a semiconductor IP core that performs real-time low-latency low-power neural network inference in a small package. It is platform-independent both in the way you train and capture your neural networks and in the hardware component on which you map the IP core. This talk will compare the performance between two FPGA targets and one ASIC target of the same neural network implemented using NearbAI.

Ramses Valvekens is managing director of Easics since the management buy-out in 2004. Besides his role as CSO, active in the NearbAI product line of low-latency embedded neural network inference engines, he also takes up a system architect role, focusing on technology selection, project risk reduction and cost-effective mixed-signal ASIC and FPGA design trade-offs. He holds a master’s degree in electronics engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, performed research at Grenoble INP and was a research scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in California. He is co-inventor of two telecom patents.

BC-Event logo rgb

Ultra-low-power intelligent sensing with the spiking neural processor

Intelligent sensing will be central in providing a seamless user experience in electronic devices – headphones that understand the difference between speech and background noise, security cameras that can differentiate between humans and pets, wearables that can detect if you’re falling ill. However, the narrow power envelope of these battery-powered devices is often a significant obstacle in realizing rich application functionalities based on traditional neural networks. Innatera employs a radically different approach to processing data efficiently at the sensor edge. Using brain-inspired spiking neural networks atop a programmable analog-mixed signal architecture, Innatera’s spiking neural processor enables always-on sensing applications within an ultra-low power budget. This talk introduces the spiking neural processor and outlines how its neuromorphic architecture enables sub-milliwatt signal processing and pattern recognition at the sensor edge.

Sumeet Kumar is the CEO of Innatera Nanosystems, the pioneering Dutch neuromorphic processor company. He holds an MSc and PhD in microelectronics from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He was previously with Intel, where he worked with the Imaging and Camera Technologies Group developing domain-specific tools for the development of complex media processor architectures. At Delft, he is credited with creating two highly successful European R&D programs developing energy-efficient compute hardware for highly automated vehicles, together with organizations including Infineon, NXP and BMW, among others. He was also responsible for leading industry-focused research on power-efficient multiprocessors and computational neuroscience.

Events System Architecting Conference logo

High-volume semiconductor test – where every millisecond counts

For over 30 years, ITEC has been the special force of Philips, NXP and Nexperia, providing best-in-class back-end in-house manufacturing solutions such as automatic test equipment, assembly equipment and factory automation software. Firstly and foremost targeting high-volume production of discrete semiconductors, process throughput increase and capability enhancement has always been a main driver for system development and introduction of new architectures. For the tester portfolio, a major architectural change was implemented in 2002 by the introduction of the microParset platform – very flexible, high performance and very high speed. The nanoParset was introduced later in 2020 to provide a further increase in throughput and measurement performance. New demands in the power discrete and power management IC market are now driving the development of the next-generation power tester: the MegaParset. A major redesign of the software architecture in combination with a new overall system architecture will deliver the world’s fastest power-semiconductor tester. But there are also new challenges on the horizon. As ITEC recently became an independent entity of Nexperia, it should not only consider Nexperia’s current and future demands but also those of other customers. In this talk, Felix Patschkowski and Robin Rieken will share some important challenges regarding performance, evolvability and factory integration.

After completing his graduation assignment on discrete RF oscillators at NXP Semiconductors, Robin Rieken started his career as electronics design engineer in automatic test equipment at NXP’s in-house equipment manufacturer; ITEC. With a passion for process optimization, problem analysis and new capability introductions, he worked on the development of existing and new tester platforms, as well as several highly successful application projects. He is energized by realizing major production throughput improvements and enabling new production capabilities, which helped to develop his expertise in semiconductor test. Ready for the next step in his career, he became a system architect for the next-generation power-semiconductor tester: the MegaParset.

Before migrating to the Netherlands, Felix Patschkowski graduated from the Technical University of Hamburg with a master’s degree in computer science and engineering and started as an automation engineer at Nexperia’s wafer fab in Hamburg. Being responsible for the automation of the wafer test department, he was exposed to ITEC’s technology, especially the tester platforms, right from the beginning. On a business trip to Nijmegen, he fell for the city and technology. Soon after, he started working for ITEC to develop software for existing and new testers. Over time, he grew into the position of a software architect for the latest test platform under development – the MegaParset – and he took the role of a system architect for ITEC’s factory automation solutions.

Events System Architecting Conference logo

Secure system design

Security needs a preventative mindset. Develop one and make secure coding a second nature!

In this webinar you will learn:

  • About the cat and mouse game of software security
  • The various threats against computer systems
  • Secure design principles
  • How Cydrill courses can raise your paranoia to a healthy level and can contribute to your code hygiene

Outline

Introduction to software security

  • AppSec: The weakest link in cybersecurity

Security by design

  • The STRIDE model of threats
  • Secure design principles of Saltzer and Schroeder
  • Economy of mechanism
  • Fail-safe defaults
  • Complete mediation
  • Open design
  • Separation of privilege
  • Lab – Clickjacking
  • Least privilege
  • Least common mechanism
  • Psychological acceptability

Learning how not to code

Erno has been a software developer for 35 years, half of which he has spent writing, and half breaking code. In the last ten years he is focused on teaching developers how not to code. More than 100 classes in 30 countries add to his track record all around the world.

Events System Architecting Conference logo

Bridging the gap between requirements engineering and system architecting

Tim Wilschut, Co-founder Ratio Computer Aided Systems Engineering

This presentation is about a new view method and language for creating highly structured system specification specifications and system architecture models.

Coordinating the design and production of thousands of components across modules, teams, departments and even companies is an immense challenge. Currently, the design documentation or specs of a system are often communicated in the form of natural language. Sometimes this is done in the form of SysML (alike) models or cast in a requirement management tool, but usually in the form of plain documents.   

The use of natural language results in a blind spot as it is often ambiguous, out-of-date, and inconsistent with system architecture models. This is where the Elephant Specification Language (ESL) comes in. ESL is a highly structured, though human-readable, specification language that introduces a fixed syntax and semantics while allowing the expression of any design requirement or constraint. The open-source ESL tooling supports automated consistency checks and the derivation of system architecture models – straight from the ESL specs. This effectively bridges the gap between requirements engineering and system architecting. 

After completing his PhD-thesis titled System specification and design structuring methods for a lock product platform in 2018, Tim founded Ratio Computer Aided Systems Engineering BV to support companies with modelling, visualizing, and analyzing dependency networks within design and development projects. In support of these projects, Ratio developed the open-source RaGraph Python Package for manipulation and visualization of dependency networks that works in tandem with the open-source RaESL Python Package for processing systems specifications writing in ESL. The outputs can be further explored in the interactive DSM viewer webapp. Ratio develops, maintains, and uses these tools in a variety of industries, such as infrastructure, automotive, and big science.

BC event - logo

Using AI to detect the undetected

The consistency and volume of attacks on corporate digital networks is increasing and the potential damage is enormous. Attacks are getting more sophisticated and highly targeted. The supply side of the cybersecurity market currently focuses mainly on protection at the gate (firewalls, intrusion detection, and so on). Less attention is paid to detecting intruders that are already in internal networks. Currently available detection solutions are mainly signature based, using already known characteristics of malicious software. More advanced intruders will not (always) be detected in time by these solutions. By shifting the focus to traffic patterns within your network, you can detect the previously undetected. Normal versus strange behavior of nodes in a corporate network are picked up and new innovation in technology will give you alerts on highly sophisticated attacks better and faster.

Tim Ruhl is the CTO of Sightlabs, a spinoff of TNO Cybersecurity. He holds a master’s degree and a PhD in computer science from VU Amsterdam.

BC event - logo

Keeping the same organization while expecting better engineering performance? Insanity!

Companies are continuously pressured to accelerate their product delivery, while the products they develop become increasingly advanced and complex. On top of this, the engineers required for product development become ever scarcer. After having exhausted process optimizations with Agile development processes, focus now needs to shift to continuously increase the value creation per engineer. Engineers are most effective in solving essential complexity enabled by adequate paradigms, formalisms, abstractions and (automation) tools, integrated into a coherent engineering environment. This talk will give insights into the challenges involved in developing and providing this engineering environment, and proposes an organizational change to realize it and keep delivering end-customer value.
Niels holds an MSc degree in computer science from Eindhoven University of Technology. More than 15 years of deploying model-based engineering approaches in the high-tech industry of the Netherlands have taught him that introducing even a significant improvement in an software R&D organization has numerous challenges. In his role as an MDE solution architect, he’s part of the definition and execution of continuous improvement programs to assist clients in increasing their engineering performance, with a clear focus on engineering automation.
BC event - logo

How (not) to sell technical debt?

In high tech systems software development, there can be a significant gap between the expectations of leadership to “deliver”, and the software organization ability to meet these expectations. In response to sometimes unrealistic deadlines, software teams feel forced to offer ‘shortcut’ solutions. These shortcuts are either expensive to maintain or can lead to growing the organization at an unhealthy pace. Often the dialogues around what is necessary and what is realistic are emotional.

In this talk Dirk-Jan will speak about ‘software essentials for executives’ to help executives avoid costly mistakes and ‘executive essentials for engineers’ to provide engineers with communication tools that may help executives make better decisions.

Dirk Jan Swagerman
Having seen the full spectrum of system and software development, from embedded in complex systems, web applications and image processing involving AI algorithms, Dirk-Jan Swagerman understands that software is both an asset and a debt. As an independent consultant, he helps businesses transform legacy code, improve agility and train teams in system and software architecture and integration. Dirk-Jan is experienced with execution on different levels and builds strong cross-functional and cross-site relationships. He brings sustainable quality and craftsmanship to your organization, resulting in lower cost of non-quality and better returns on your innovation investment.
BC event - logo

Patterns and antipatterns in high-tech software outsourcing

Outsourcing allows an OEM to focus on its core functionality and have access to technology experts who aren’t available at the OEM. The outsourcing provider in turn will need to understand the domain and underlying technologies and be able to facilitate a long-term commitment. This comes with its own challenges: How does the outsourcing provider acquire and persist the required domain knowledge? How does the outsourcing provider maintain an optimal interaction with the OEM when they’re not co-located? Each OEM will have its own software development process. How will the outsourcing partner make sure that they ‘interface’ in the correct way with this OEM?

Over de course of the last ten years, Alten has made an exciting journey where its focus changed from primarily consultancy to a mix of providing outsourcing services and consultancy. This new strategy hasn’t gone unnoticed and during the last three years, we’ve been awarded with an A rating as best outsourcing partner at ASML, exceeding their expectations. In this journey, a new way of working had to be adopted. In this talk, Robert van Uden tells about this journey and shares patterns and antipatterns, which are also valuable to other high-tech software development parties.

Robert van Uden works as a software architect in the Alten Delivery Center.

BC event - logo

Intelligent diagnostics meets model-based systems engineering

The high-tech industry is facing an increasing demand from customers to deliver performance and availability-based contracts. Simultaneously it’s challenged by the increasing complexity of its systems. This turns the development of a diagnostic approach into a difficult engineering task in itself. In this talk, ESI(TNO) will present their approach to embed diagnostics into the current development process and reduce the overhead for the R&D organizations by using hybrid AI techniques.

Carmen Bratosin TNO ESI
Carmen Bratosin is a project manager at ESI (TNO) managing projects in the area of diagnostics and testing. She has more than 15 years of experience of applying cutting-edge technology in different fields, including data science, model-driven development and diagnostics, at companies such as Canon Production Printing, Philips and ASML.
BC event - logo

Understanding complex embedded systems behavior

This talk will go beyond traditional debug solutions and discuss adding alternative logging techniques that allow even the most complex, virtualized embedded systems to be efficiently analyzed and optimally understood. The key is combining the logged data with a high-performance visualization tool with capabilities to understand the environment the logged data is captured in, creating a comprehensive graphical view of the system behavioral history. This is a game changer for understanding and optimizing complex embedded systems.

Marcus Nissemark is a field application engineer for Green Hills Software, a company leading in the embedded market across all industry sectors, delivering safe and secure software solutions for 40 years, including many automotive systems. Before joining Green Hills in 2014 in Sweden, Marcus worked as a software architect and developer of embedded products since 1999. Such products included controllers and display computers for heavy vehicles, medical and military-grade equipment. His experience covers multiple operating systems, device driver development as well as process and product management challenges in software development.

Events System Architecting Conference logo

Systems Engineering Vision 2035

 

Recently a team of leaders from the worldwide systems community produced the Systems Engineering Vision 2035 with inputs from across industry, academia, and government for the International Council for System Engineering (Incose).

This vision is produced every 10 years and is intended to inspire and guide the strategic direction of systems engineering for the global systems community. It can be used to develop strategies to evolve the systems engineering capability of an enterprise or project. The vision can also be used to help direct investments and support collaborative efforts to advance the discipline and grow the skill base to meet current and future challenges related to systems development.

Harry van der Velde will present the 2035 version at Sysarch. After his presentation there will be ample time for discussion.

Harry van der Velde joined Shell almost 25 years ago as a process engineer. He started his career supporting offshore platforms in the central North Sea with his role as commissioning engineer of the Shearwater platform as a highlight. In 2001, he moved to Malaysia to work for Sarawak Shell Berhad where he was responsible for process engineering support for the upstream facilities that deliver gas to the Malaysia LNG facilities in Bintulu. He subsequently became lead systems engineer for the Gumusut Floating Production Systems in Kuala Lumpur ensuring an optimized and integrated design for topsides, hull and subsea systems. In 2007, he was seconded to ENI and worked in Atyrau, Kazakhstan as senior project engineer for the offshore facilities of the Kashagan EP project. He joined the Floating LNG team in 2010 as an Engineering Manager by working on Prelude, Abadi and Browse FLNG projects. The last four years he was in Shell Internal Audit as audit manager responsible for independent assurance of the Liquid Natural Gas, Gas to Liquids and New Energies portfolios. In 2021, he re-joined Shell Projects and Technology and is responsible for the implementation of Systems Engineering in capital projects and is global community lead for Engineering Management.

 Harry will be the chairman of the Dutch Incose chapter from march 2023.

BC event - logo

Requirements engineering and embedded systems design

To be able to deliver a product with the desired quality, at the agreed moment in time and within budget, requirements engineering is an important starting point. It allows you to keep track of the status of the requirements itself, focus on the agreed scope and, with the proper infrastructure, monitor the status of the design implementation and verification. Especially when regulatory requirements need to be taken into account, for example when designing automotive or medical products and functional safety comes into play, the use of dedicated tooling is a great aid to be able to provide the necessary coverage evidence and audit trails. At Neways, we typically work according to the V model. This talk will show how the upper left side of the V can be managed with the use of application lifecycle management (ALM) tooling, and the benefits that this has for your project when progressing to the right side of the V.
Bart Bonten is a senior lead designer at Neways Technologies in Echt. In this role, he is driving the development process from early customer contact, to the first shipments to the customer and support thereafter. Before joining Neways in 2016, he built up 20 years of experience in various roles related to the design of embedded systems at companies like General Electric and UTC.
Events System Architecting Conference logo

The coordinating role of model based systems engineering in setting up high-performance engineering systems

The demands on engineering environments are rapidly increasing. Digitization requires engineers to apply modeling techniques such that computers can optimally contribute to the engineering process. The information that must be exchanged with external parties will have to conform to various agreements. For example Digital Twinning requires continuous integration of engineering contributions.

To make system or product developments successful, Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) plays a coordinating role. Especially in setting up high-performance engineering systems we can no longer do without this kind of approach. This allows the system engineer to keep pace with the developments, but it also requires the system engineer to increasingly contribute to the orchestration of the engineering systems.

In this presentation Marc Hamilton will discuss the considerations we need to make in applying MBSE, how these developments affect the systems engineering discipline and what we can expect for the future.

Marc Hamilton works at Capgemini Engineering to further develop Engineering Automation. Marc has over twenty years of experience in automating engineering environments, especially for high-tech, software-intensive systems. The basis for this lies in human communication in these environments. By applying language technology in combination with available modeling techniques, the environments can actually be “model driven”, which offers many quantifiable and non-quantifiable advantages. In addition to the technological aspects, this also explicitly concerns the business economic and the organizational aspects of engineering.

In his role at the High Tech Systems Center (part of the Eindhoven Artificial Intelligence Systems Institute (EAISI) of the Eindhoven University of Technology) he is working on further developing research in the overarching area of digital engineering and education of systems engineering. With his involvement in the Centrum voor Ondergronds Bouwen (COB) he is bridging the evolutions on interoperability in the infra domain and the automation in the high tech sector.

BC event - logo

Automating maintenance: the way out of the software renovation paradox

Necessary maintenance on complex legacy systems is not done to avoid palpable and immediate risks. Not changing code that works is a well-motivated, well-considered engineering decision from the short to medium-term perspective (quarters and years). On the other hand, everything always changes, and so not renovating is a risk that’s no less real. Eventually, and always, software renovation becomes an existential matter: either move forward or give up. However, at that same time, the code will have grown beyond our capacity of understanding it. To overcome the limitations of human comprehension, in a recent collaboration between CWI, TUE and Philips, we used the Rascal metaprogramming language and its Clair C++ front-end to automatically analyze and transform a large legacy C++ test system to bring it up-to-date with the latest technical standards. Learning how to analyze and transform source code without having to read everything is rapidly becoming an essential skill for professional software engineers.
Jurgen Vinju is a part-time full professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, a senior researcher at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and co-owner of Swat.engineering. His research and engineering efforts are all targeted at managing software complexity through metaprogramming: software that analyses, manipulates, generates or visualizes the source code of other software. Rascal is the metaprogramming language that he co-designed and implemented, which is applied to a wide variety of software engineering challenges in research, education and industry.
Events System Architecting Conference logo

Reuse of Adapto warehouse storage solution in an airport platform - approach and challenges of architecture refactoring

Vanderlande is currently making a transition from engineering-to-order to configure-to-order by developing platforms (system of systems) for it’s market segments airports, warehousing and parcel. Several solutions have been developed in one specific platform that were later reused in the other platform resulting in a mixed, entangled system and IT architecture.

In this presentation we show the architectural complexity that emerges when a system within our warehousing platform, the Adapto storage solution, is reused in our airports platform. We will discuss the challenges we faced such as how to refactor and untangle the architecture. Will modern design patterns like Domain-Driven Design and MicroService architecture help us to develop material handling solutions that could easily be shared between our platforms?

Vanderlande is the global market leader for future-proof logistic process automation at airports. The company is also a leading supplier of process automation solutions for warehouses and in the parcel market. The company focuses on the optimisation of its customers’ business processes and competitive positions.

Gaston Weijenberg joined Vanderlande 28 year ago as a computer engineer, worked on several projects and was involved in the development of the Oslo Gardermoen Airport baggage handling system where he gained lot of insides on logistics and the controls systems.

In 2002 he became system architect for the baggage handling system of the new Heathrow Airport Terminal 5; he was involved in the conceptual design of the baggage system, the IT architecture of the controls system and its main software components. This architecture and these components were reused in several other systems, which were later consolidated as the airports platform, Vanderlande’s first platform.

He architected several extensions to the airports platform such as robotics solutions and multi-terminal functionality to maintain Vanderlande’s leading position in this market.

In 2017 he moved to the Technology department where he became member of a new team, Systems Architecture & Strategy, as senior strategic architect. The team focusses on innovative architectural patterns and methodologies that enable Vanderlande to deliver logistics solutions in a faster and more predictable way.

BC event - logo

A product platform to support Rijkswaterstaat with upcoming development, renovation and replacement of (semi-)standardized locks

During the first half of the last century, many navigation locks have been built throughout the Netherlands. In the coming decades, approximately fifty navigation locks have to be thoroughly renovated or replaced. Historically, locks have been built using an Engineer-to-Order production strategy. This has resulted in a large variety of lock designs, which is considered to be inefficient from the viewpoint of design, construction, and maintenance. Therefore, Rijkswaterstaat (RWS), the executive branch of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, is developing a modularization and standardization strategy for locks as part of the MultiWaterWerk project. By doing so, RWS aims to increase the efficiency of the replacement task and simultaneously increase lock reliability and availability (RA), decrease life-cycle-costs (LCC), and decrease uncertainty in construction costs and time.

The MultiWaterWerk project contributes to the objectives of RWS by exploring methods for designing a lock product platform. Product platforms are commonly used as part of Make-to-Order and Configure-to-Order production strategies. Such a platform forms the basis for the development of customized products from (semi-)standardized component modules to meet specific customer needs.

It is proposed to create a lock product platform composed of fully-, semi-, and non-standardized component modules. The platform distinguishes between basic modules and optional modules. Basic modules are groups of components that are always present in any lock. Optional modules are groups of components that are only occasionally present in a lock. A product platform can support RWS with the upcoming development, renovation, and replacement of (semi)-standardized locks that meet location-specific requirements and constraints.

Tiemen Schuijbroek gained his MSc in Mechanical Engineering in 2018 at the Eindhoven University of Technology after completing his BSc at the same institution. His graduation work regarding analysis of “Local buses in Dependency Structure Matrices” was part of a greater Systems Engineering effort that is still ongoing by Rijkswaterstaat and the University, involving several PhD students. Tiemen co-founded Ratio Computer Aided Systems Engineering (Ratio CASE) with the PhD student that supervised him during his graduation, Tim Wilschut, to continue their efforts and develop the philosophy and tools for commercial application. Since September 2018, Ratio CASE provides software and consultancy services in the field of Systems Engineering and maintain the Elephant Specification Language (ESL) to write highly structured, multi-level system specifications. The title of Tim’s PhD dissertation reads “System specification and design structuring methods for a lock product platform”, of which the developed methods will be addressed.

Sjoerd Knippenberg received his BSc degree in Electrical Engineering (specialization Automotive) in 2016 and his MSc degree in Automotive Technology, with great appreciation, in 2018 from Eindhoven University of technology, The Netherlands. He is currently working towards a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology in cooperation with Rijkswaterstaat. The research interest of his project is in the development of a product platform for infrastructural systems using model-based systems engineering methods. The aim of this product platform is to support Rijkswaterstaat with the planned renovation of their ship lock portfolio.

Bits&Chips Sustainability Conference

Integrating sustainability into long-term growth investing

Cian Whelan, Governance and sustainability analyst, Baillie Gifford

What sustainability conference would be complete without an investment manager taking the opportunity to overpromise the sustainability credentials of their products and attack ill-defined strawmen competitors? This presentation will do none of those things. In the course of twenty entertaining minutes (YMMV), Cian will talk through his role as Environmental Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) analyst at Baillie Gifford, why long-term investors should care about sustainability regardless of the hype, and what integrating ESG actually looks like in practice.

Founded in 1908, Baillie Gifford is a private partnership, wholly owned by partners who work in the firm. Cian is a member of the International Growth investment team, where he focuses on integrating ESG considerations into the investment process to find the small number of exceptional companies with the potential to deliver outlier returns for clients.

Sustainability Conference 2022 Cian Whelan

Cian Whelan is an environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) analyst at Baillie Gifford. Baillie Gifford is a long-term active investment manager headquartered in Edinburgh, in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1908, Baillie Gifford is a private partnership, wholly owned by partners who work in the firm. Cian is a member of the International Growth investment team, where he focuses is on integrating ESG considerations into the investment process to find the small number of exceptional companies with the potential to deliver outlier returns for clients. Prior to joining Baillie Gifford, Cian was the environmental and social specialist on the Northern Europe team at Glass Lewis, the proxy advisor, and prior to that completed a PhD on the cultural dimensions of mainstreaming ESG in China.

Bits&Chips Sustainability Conference

Developing sustainable gradient amplifiers for MRI scanners

Joost van Straalen, Principal engineer, Prodrive Technologies

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a very powerful image modality for hospitals. To reduce scan time and enhance image quality, MRI scanners rely on gradient amplifiers to drive the gradient coils with voltages above 2000V and currents of 1200A. The gradient systems of the latest MRI scanners consume more and more energy. If this trend continuous this energy consumption is becoming an issue for hospitals.

Prodrive Technologies is applying its sustainability design methods, to develop a new generation gradient amplifiers based on SiC MOSFETs to reduce the energy consumption of an MRI scanner and to improve the circularity of its components. In this talk Joost explains these methods and the technology behind this innovation.

Joost van Straalen - Sustainability Conference

Joost van Straalen is the principal engineer at Prodrive Technologies for the gradient amplifier portfolio. He started working at Prodrive Technologies in 2005 and worked on numerous projects as electric