BANGALORE, INDIA: We have seen iPad, tablets and telemedicine over the last decade and more. In this scenario, it’s but natural to think: What’s next?

The Vision Summit 2012 of the Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) gave a glimpse about that in a session, titled Next Generation Electronic Products, on Tuesday.

Eminent personalities from diverse disciplines – Dr Shyam Vasudeva Rao, president and chief technology officer, Forus Health; Sharon Holt, senior vice-president & general manager, Semiconductor Business Group, Rambus Inc.;Matteo Lo-Presti, IMS Group, vice-president, Systems Lab & Technical Marketing, STMicroelectronics; Sanjay Gupta, senior vice-president, Product Engineering Solutions, Wipro Technologies and Liam Madden, corporate vice-president, Xilinx, Inc. – discussed what future holds for the electronics design and manufacturing industry.

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FPGA, according to Madden, would be all about increase in bandwidth and leaps in performance. “A lot of customers are looking at platform approach – a specific chip for a functionality. Medical imaging, for which portability is very important, will have a lot of volumes. FPGAs will see rapid deployments,” he explained.

As compared to SOCs, FPGAs involved lesser costs to get to the markets quicker, he argued, adding that the trend would continue, since they had accommodated more functionalities than before.

Holt felt that there was a need to have a lot more interaction among systems companies to add value at the system level. She said new memory technologies would evolve, as in the case of NAND flash, within the next half-a-decade and reckoned that integration would assume higher significance.

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That energy demand was growing systematically was highlighted by Lo-Presti, who added that energy sources optimization, efficiency increase and smart grid solutions were the way forward.

He also said that wireless charging, eliminating the need of dedicated power adaptors, would be in vogue. Lo-Presti betted big on healthcare solutions, too, with wireless sensors and actuators aiding in remote healthcare service and 24-hour monitoring.

Ultra-low power at low cost in an effective manner, he said, would be the most exciting thing in the semiconductor sector in the next 3-4 years.

Rao contended that innovative trends in healthcare, including sensors and on-body electronics, information and computation, user interface and design, and service delivery models would create buzz in the sector.

“Connectivity is a big challenge, but it opens up a lot of opportunities. The top-three trends would be MEMS & nano, real-time image processing, unique GPUs & multicore DSP, and microarray for gene mapping, point of care/screening devices.”

For instance, in a case of cardiac arrest signs, a device might either reassure it was not the case or trigger an ambulatory service to ensure timely assistance, elucidated Rao.

3Nethra, a single, intelligent, pre-screening device also found a mention in his speech, in which he said that it would help broad-based detection of eye ailments with a telemedicine interface and would cost one-third to one-fifth of the conventional methods.

User experience being key to product design was highlighted by Gupta. “The silicon needs to be different even in what we call a smartphone, on who the target customer is – whether it is someone who is into a business, one who speaks a lot, texts less or one who uses only texts and video games.”

As for banking services in rural areas, it should be about ease of use and family entertainment system would have social media, cable and online video, among others, he said.

The session was moderated by president and chief editor of CyberMedia Publications, Prasanto K. Roy, who touched upon enhancing the global market position for India with next generation electronic product technologies in response to consumer market drivers, such as touch mania, augmented reality, wireless, power and consumer mindset.