Based on the McKinsey study of 2026 technology trends and their level of maturity making an attempt to see what will change in embedded systems, this forecast is agnostic to industry and is a guess-ti-mate as it is very tough to be accurate, that said, at attempt is being made here.
The main trends and their impact to embedded is as follows with 1-4-9- scale, 1 being the lowest impact and 9 being the highest.
| Technology Trend | Adoption Score | Adoption Status |
|---|---|---|
| AI infrastructure and model architectures | 4 | Scaling in progress |
| Application-specific semiconductors | 4 | Scaling in progress |
| Cybersecurity and trustworthy systems | 4 | Scaling in progress |
| Advanced connectivity | 4 | Scaling in progress |
| Future of life sciences and bioengineering | 4 | Scaling in progress |
| Future of energy and sustainability technologies | 4 | Scaling in progress |
| Agentic software development | 3 | Piloting |
| Agentic AI | 3 | Piloting |
| Future of mobility | 3 | Piloting |
| AI for scientific discovery and engineering | 2 | Experimentation |
| Immersive-reality technologies | 2 | Experimentation |
| Future of robotics | 2 | Experimentation |
| Future of space technologies | 2 | Experimentation |
| Quantum technologies | 1 | Frontier innovation |
Where the adoption score is 4 with scaling in progress it is implicit that this is a brown field and many players are already there which is why the Adoption Score of 4 impacts embedded systems.
Top three impacts are:
- As AI infrastructure is growing rapidly, the memory costs both NAND flash and DRAM are increasing, this will force ODM (Original Device Manufacturers ) and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to demand more for less, meaning more features in the mid variant as against the premium variant. This will need embedded software to be more cognizant of the compute and memory usage.
- With new ASIC development, there opportunities for VLSI design and verification skills to be in high demand.
- As AI is reducing the time from detection of Zero day vulnerability to exploitation embedded systems need to be constantly monitored for attacks and alert the SOC (Security Operations Center) with a well tested fix available for OTA (Over the Air) as soon as possible.
