The Internet of Things has revolutionized our personal lives, providing us with new

levels of convenience, productivity and connectivity. However, the business world

has been slower to adapt wireless devices and digital technologies. Here, Ravi
Thummarukudy of Mobiveil — a technology leader in the data center, networking
and IoT markets — discusses why companies have been slow to embrace the
Industrial Internet of Things, along with the opportunities that await them once
they do. He also describes some strategies for beginning to realize the benefits of
emerging IoT technologies today.

© 2016 ANSYS, Inc. ANSYS.COM 18 DIMENSIONS I SUMMER 2016

We’ve relied on engineering
simulation for years to test the
performance of our chip and board
designs before licensing them to
customers.

DIMENSIONS: Can you tell us what Mobiveil does and how the know that communication and connectivity are being built
company plays a central role in the Internet of Things (IoT)? in from the earliest design stages. We’ve relied on engineer-
ing simulation for years to test the performance of our chip
RAVI THUMMARUKUDY: Mobiveil specializes in developing and board designs before licensing them to customers. Our
silicon intellectual properties (SIP), platforms and solutions licensed knowledge helps to ensure that the Internet of
used in data centers, communication networks and many Things is robustly engineered to maximize the performance
other Internet of Things applications. In essence, we are a and reliability of connections among all the different “things”
fabless semiconductor company but we don’t produce chips. that exist in today’s heterogeneous technology environment.
We license our chip design and implementation technology
to customers as an intellectual property. Our customers are DIMENSIONS: Given your unique perspective, what is the
leading semiconductor businesses working on complex chip most exciting development you foresee for the IoT over the
and board designs, but they don’t want to start from the next several years?
ground up. We provide them with the building blocks they
need to deliver speed, capacity, power and other performance RT: Much of the excitement and buzz about the Internet of
features to their customers — who include the leading elec- Things today centers on the way it will impact our personal
tronics companies producing technologies for the Internet of lives. We’ll have connected homes and smart appliances that
Things. Because we serve this market, we have a unique per- anticipate our needs for comfort and convenience. Drones
spective on the future of the IoT. will deliver our packages. We’ll be wearing more and more
electronics. This captures our imagination, and with good
DIMENSIONS: What special engineering challenges has the reason.
explosive growth of the IoT created?
But I believe the bigger growth area will be leveraging the IoT
RT: One of our key focuses at Mobiveil over the past several in business applications — often referred to as the Industrial
years has been designing and delivering the right communi- Internet of Things (IIoT). Just as smartphones and tablets
cations and connectivity functions. It’s no longer enough to have revolutionized our personal lives, technology has the
see each board or chip as an independently functioning unit. power and potential to change our manufacturing facilities,
In the IoT, everything is connected. The products of company our warehouses, our offices and our transportation networks.
A must effectively communicate with the products of compa- Unfortunately, the business world has been slower to discover
nies B, C and D. In response, we’ve created many standard and adopt these emerging technologies, even though the pay-
interfaces that ensure this integration. These interfaces are off could be enormous. I think we will see this trend reverse
the “secret sauce” that our customers value, because they itself over the next few years, and we will see companies

© 2016 ANSYS, Inc. ANSYS.COM DIMENSIONS I SUMMER 2016 19

accelerating their adoption of IoT technologies. Eventually, I discussed earlier how Mobiveil helps
strategically applying the IoT in an industrial setting will be to ensure connectivity and communica-
recognized as delivering a competitive advantage. As market tion. Openness and collaboration with
leaders adopt the Industrial Internet of Things, other compa- business partners is highly valued in
nies will have to follow suit. today’s world. But anytime a company
connects to a partner — or the cloud —
DIMENSIONS: Can you give us some examples of how the IIoT there is an inherent security risk. No
might benefit the typical company? one wants to allow external parties to
have the power to intercept data and
RT: Certainly there is a huge opportunity for plant automa- gain control over a production facility,
tion. Manufacturers can gather data about customer demand, a plane in flight or an electric utility.
transportation capacity, materials availability and other real- That’s a very real concern that must be
time business conditions to run their production facilities addressed before most businesses will
much smarter and more cost-efficiently. Artificial intelligence be willing to create real-time, device-
can begin to drive many of the decisions about what to make, based connections with third parties.
when and in what quantity — decisions that are largely made
by humans today. The IIoT is also going to create new
power demands as increased volumes
Remote equipment monitoring is another area in which the of information are collected and stored.
IoT can make a major contribution. Aircraft engines, under- The multitude of sensors and devices
sea equipment and implantable medical devices are just a few deployed around the world will need
examples of equipment that might be hard to monitor and to be supplied with power in a reliable,
control today. By installing sensors on these types of equip- cost-efficient manner. In addition, com-
ment, gathering data and analyzing it in real time, companies panies will need to create or access data centers where they
can predict and prevent many cases of mechanical failure — can process and analyze their new insights about customers,
as well as schedule maintenance in a more cost-effective way, plants, equipment and other factors that affect their success.
based on real-world conditions and not educated guesses. Not only will these data centers consume large amounts of
Future product development can obviously be significantly power, but they will be accompanied by practical problems
improved if we have a clearer understanding of how products such as cooling needs and physical security requirements.
are actually performing in the real world.
These are not minor concerns. When you consider all these
DIMENSIONS: Why has the business world been slower to new requirements and risks, it’s really not surprising that
embrace the Internet of Things than the consumer market? businesses have been slow to invest in the Industrial Internet
of Things.
RT: There are a number of reasons. Probably the most impor-
tant is that companies have a lot more at stake. If a con- DIMENSIONS: What can businesses do to mitigate these fac-
sumer buys a personal fitness monitor and it doesn’t work as tors and speed up their adoption of emerging technology?
expected, that’s a relatively minor problem. But if executives
are trusting technology to manage their production facili- RT: In the short term, the clear answer is to partner with estab-
ties and meet customer commitments, the cost of failure is lished experts who have already figured out these issues. It is
obviously much higher. Customers could be lost, and profit simply too costly and time-consuming today to build an inde-
margins could disappear. For many enterprises, 24/7 opera- pendent IIoT capability — and the required knowledge and
tion is critical to their success, so it can be very risky to adopt technology resources are readily available.
any new technology model. While the IIoT offers a significant
payback, sometimes it’s easier for executives to just stick to
“business as usual” and realize reliable results.

ANSYS recently teamed up with Tata Consulting Services as

part of the GE Predix early adopter program to demonstrate
how engineering simulation can be intimately integrated into
the industrial internet ecosystem. One example demonstrated
anomaly detection in a gas pipeline.

© 2016 ANSYS, Inc. ANSYS.COM 20 DIMENSIONS I SUMMER 2016

 For example, there are many service While data security is a huge challenge, there are certainly
providers around the world offering experts who can help address this issue as companies collect
affordable cloud storage that can data from devices and sensors, as well as interact with trad-
be accessed by anyone. This cost- ing partners and cloud providers. This is a well-founded con-
efficient option enables any company cern that must be thoughtfully considered, but ultimately it
to begin collecting new data via should not be a deterrent to capitalizing on the IIoT.
the IIoT and applying it to pressing
challenges. One caveat is that most Until internal capabilities for data analysis — which is one of
businesses store entirely too much today’s fastest-growing career fields — are built, companies
information; executives need to can access third-party expertise in this area too. Mining data
separate the truly useful data from and identifying key insights are specialized skills, but many
the unimportant, then only store firms today offer this expertise. With today’s software-centric
the most essential insights that will data-center architecture, many third-party analytics applica-
actually be helpful. This will help tions could be run on the collected data to provide for the best
minimize their outsourcing costs. management insight and decision making.

A number of trends are making cloud Collecting the right amount of data, ensuring the right level of
storage more affordable every day, security, and applying the right amount of data processing at
putting it within easy reach of any the right location are all key challenging questions that need
enterprise. Many service providers to be answered for each enterprise. Eventually, I believe the
have addressed the power and ther- cloud will become smarter and actually incorporate analytics
mal issues associated with large data along with compute and physical storage. That’s when we’ll
centers by constructing facilities in really see an explosion of the Industrial Internet of Things.
cooler climates such as Eastern Europe, and designing build-
ings with low cooling costs as a primary goal. This allows
cloud providers to reduce their service fees. In addition, the
transition from magnetic storage systems to emerging flash
storage technology — which is a magnitude faster in terms
of data retrieval time — is bringing down the time and costs
involved in data processing. Large, data-intensive companies
like Amazon and Google have already made this transition,
and we can expect others to follow suit.

About
Ravi Thummarukudy
Ravi Thummarukudy has over 28 years of experience in the
semiconductor industry. Before joining Mobiveil as CEO,
he was a co-founder of GDA Technologies, a privately held
design firm offering end-to-end solutions for semiconductor
product development. Prior to this, Thummarukudy held
global business and technology management positions at
Cadence Design Systems, Tata Consultancy Services and the
Indian Space Research Organization. He has contributed articles
to Chip Design Magazine, Electronic Design, ISD Magazine and
SiliconIndia. He holds a B.S.E.E. from Mar Athanasius College of
Engineering and an M.Tech. from IIT Madras, India.

Mobiveil at a Glance
Privately Held Employees: 125 Headquarters: Milipitas, USA

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