Blog

Keep It Simple with CMake: Code Anywhere, Build Anywhere

David Källberg — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:14:35 GMT

How CMake helps embedded teams standardize workflows across developers, operating systems, and CI/CD environments.

Physical AI in Regulated Markets: Why Embedded Development Teams Must Rethink Firmware Compliance

rafael.taubinger@iar.com (Rafael Taubinger) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:51:45 GMT

What Is the Difference Between Edge AI and Physical AI?

Edge AI runs inference on constrained hardware and outputs information — a classification, a prediction, a score. Physical AI takes that same inference output and uses it to act: driving a motor, a valve, a brake, or a surgical instrument.

Building the modern embedded workflow: One toolchain, Linux-native, no compromise

rafael.taubinger@iar.com (Rafael Taubinger) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:47:57 GMT

A modern embedded workflow is not one decision. It is a stack of them, made one at a time, usually in this order: pick a build system that is not tied to a vendor's project format. Get CI running on something reproducible. Make sure debugging still holds up once the code leaves a developer's desk. Each decision is defensible on its own. Put them together, though, and most teams find one piece still does not fit: the certified toolchain itself, compiler and debugger, has stayed locked to whichever OS it was originally validated on.

Build medical devices patients can rely on

rafael.taubinger@iar.com (Rafael Taubinger) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:17:23 GMT

A single defect in a deployed medical device is never “just a patch.” It can mean a field recall, an adverse event report, or a delayed submission that costs a program months. That's the reality medical device teams are building in today, and it's exactly why compliance can't be treated as a finish-line activity. The teams that fare best treat it as something built in from day one, not something chased after the fact.

AI writes the code. Who guarantees the quality?

rafael.taubinger@iar.com (Rafael Taubinger) — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:33:52 GMT

Speed is not the constraint. Evidence is.

AI coding assistants have changed what a single developer can output in a morning. Code that once took hours to sketch out gets generated in seconds. For exploratory work and rapid prototyping, the productivity gains are real.

Your car runs on 100 million lines of code. Can your tools keep up?

shawn.prestridge@iar.com (Shawn Prestridge) — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:31:42 GMT

The software that runs your car is outgrowing the tools that built it

Modern vehicles are no longer mechanical products with a software layer on top, they are software platforms on wheels. The average car today runs hundreds of millions of lines of code spread across dozens of independent Electronic Control Units (ECUs), and in some cases, rivals commercial aircraft in sheer software complexity. Power management, body control, infotainment, and advanced driver-assistance systems all depend on code, and that code never stops changing.

Why Smart Industry initiatives stall before they ship

rafael.taubinger@iar.com (Rafael Taubinger) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:28:38 GMT

Factory automation, robotics, power systems, and Industrial IoT all face the same hidden challenge: development complexity that grows faster than teams can manage.

Your build environment is your safety evidence

rafael.taubinger@iar.com (Rafael Taubinger) — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:13:11 GMT

If your build environment cannot be reproduced reliably, neither can your compliance. Whether you are building a medical device, an automotive controller, or an industrial automation system, certification requirements do not bend to development schedules or budget pressures, but how much overhead that certification carries is something you can control.

Software-defined everything in embedded systems: Staying in control as complexity grows

shawn.prestridge@iar.com (Shawn Prestridge) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:53:01 GMT

Embedded systems have always been software-driven. For decades, engineers have used software to differentiate products, improve performance, and extend functionality beyond what fixed hardware alone could offer.

What has changed is not the idea itself, but the scale and complexity.

From AI to CRA: The trends shaping the future of embedded development at embedded world 2026

Jakob Ågren — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:47:21 GMT

Embedded systems are entering a new phase. What I’ve been seeing and increasingly feeling is how the combination of edge AI, stricter security regulations, modern software workflows, and platform-based development is reshaping how embedded software is designed, built, and maintained.