The industry association formerly known as ARTEMIS is evolving: as Inside, we aim to focus even more on our innovative members and how we create Intelligent Digital Systems together. Patrick Pype, Director Strategic Partnerships at NXP and long-time contributor to Inside, shares his viewpoint on the new name and what it means to be part of this community.
The heart of everything
“I’ve been involved in Inside since the very, very beginning. Don’t ask me when as it’s a long time ago!” Patrick begins. “I became a member of the Steering Board and a guest of the Presidium and we intensively discussed rebranding. To me, this is a positive action because ‘Inside’ sounds much more powerful than ‘ARTEMIS’. When you hear ‘Intelligent Digital Systems’, that tells you everything.”
Although Patrick’s work is focused on semiconductor design, he’s keenly aware of the push and pull factors that other domains are now exerting. “Semiconductors are the heart of everything, but the hardware doesn’t work if you don’t have intelligent embedded software,” he explains. “On the other hand, I think it’s also important that we create a basis for people to trust their devices. We need to make sure that security, safety and privacy protection are guaranteed. Resilience and robustness are key factors for a future where devices can anticipate and automate our needs before we are even aware of them and can warn and take action if something goes wrong. I see this as an important research domain for the future: combining such artificial intelligence in systems with a high grade of safety and security requirements.”
“Inside is ideal for getting to know what’s happening in the world and in the value network, as I now call it,”
Crossing the language barrier
As an example of this, Patrick points to the recently-concluded SECREDAS project. Led by NXP and counting numerous Inside members among its 69 participating organisations, this was one of the first ECSEL projects to look at security, safety and privacy from the dual perspective of mobility and health. The many impressive results include 46 hardware and software demonstrators and prototypes for mitigating threats to connected and automated vehicles, but Patrick has also found a great deal of value on an individual level.
“We’ve been able to bring together actors in different fields like the security, safety, automotive and medical domains. If you talk about security and safety in an automotive application, that’s different to a medical or rail context. In my opinion, an understanding of each other’s ‘languages’ is one of the key results of this project. On one hand, I’m focusing on the activities of my company. But on the other hand, I learn a lot from the discussions we have in this forum and get new insights I can use within the company and the partnerships we engage in.”
In a nutshell, this is what Inside is all about: bringing experts out of their silos and combining their knowledge for mutual benefit. “Inside is ideal for getting to know what’s happening in the world and in the value network, as I now call it,” says Patrick. “In the past, you had the classic supply chain where the semiconductor company delivered to the printed circuit board manufacturer which delivered to the software company which built the system. Now, you see more direct interactions between OEMs (like car manufacturers), semiconductor companies and software companies in order to come up with a final integrated system solution. And Inside forms an ideal platform to bring all these players together and get the whole value chain talking.”