IAR has been a leader in the embedded market for over 40 years and is currently transforming into a solutions company offering embedded solutions and engineering services. While providing products for embedded development environments, IAR has recently been focusing on embedded security.

We met with Kiyo Uemura, Vice President of IAR Asia Pacific, to ask about IAR's recent activities and to get a glimpse into the future market outlook and IAR's perspective on the Korean market.

■ Introduction of myself and IAR

Representing businesses across all Asian regions, including Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Southeast Asia. About 38 people work in Asia, which accounts for one-third of IAR's total sales.

About IAR: We have 40 years of experience in the embedded market, and our current core business is embedded development environments and embedded security.

■ The company recently changed its logo. Could you please tell us about the new logo and why it was changed?

One of the reasons we changed our logo was to convey our identity as a single company. We've integrated SecureThingz, previously acquired, into a single business unit within IAR.

Another reason is that the previous logo, created in the late 1980s, included the word "Systems," which evoked the image of a technology company. The logo was changed to reflect the company's transformation into a solutions company and its commitment to communicating with the public and customers.

We used the red circle as is to express that we are the same company providing engineering and services, using the existing company colors.

■ What was the reason for your visit to Korea, and how does IAR view the Korean market?

IAR Korea has been in business for 10 years and has experienced significant growth, particularly in the automotive, medical, and industrial automation sectors, and expects continued growth.

I haven't been able to visit Korea for the past three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I used to visit regularly every quarter. This is my first visit since the pandemic. In Korea, I've been able to learn about the Korean market through conversations with many customers and partners.

■ Voices calling for strengthening embedded security are growing louder worldwide. IAR recently released a new embedded trust product. Let me introduce this product and its features.

We offer end-to-end embedded security solutions, covering everything from product concept through design, development, verification, and mass production. These are truly unique products, and we understand that implementing security requires significant resources for many customers.

However, because IAR's solutions are so easy and simple to implement, we hope they'll incorporate our security solutions into their products. Based on IAR's 40 years of business experience, we know that code quality, safety, and security are three crucial keywords in our customers' product development.

Many Korean customers are highly concerned about quality, and the automotive and industrial automation markets place a high emphasis on safety. Security will become a key keyword in the future, and IAR believes the timing for launching and upgrading its security solutions is particularly opportune.

■ The Korean market's interest in embedded security is not yet high. I wonder how to increase interest in embedded security in the Korean market.

Looking back on my past business experiences in Korea, I realized that until 10 years ago, many Korean customers didn't care about quality.

However, with changes in certification, regulations and standards, many customers are now very concerned about quality.

The same holds true for functional safety in the automotive and industrial automation markets. First, quality becomes a priority, followed by functional safety.

Next up is security. I expect most Korean customers will be interested in security in the near future. In line with this, we will be engaging with IAR's Korean customers to discuss their security challenges and the solutions they need, and we believe this is a very opportune time for the Korean market.

■ When it comes to IAR, the most famous product is the Embedded Workbench. Recently, the Embedded Workbench has become a useful software for developers, with the number of supported MCUs and MPUs increasing significantly. Could you please introduce the Embedded Workbench and give some advice on embedded development using it?

IAR Embedded Workbench is an integrated development environment that brings together all the features software engineers need for development.

Additionally, it provides support for a wide range of devices and cores. While Arm core devices are the most widely used in Korea, there is a recent trend of RISC-V core devices outside of Korea.

Several MCU and SoC companies are using RISC-V, and it is expected that many RISC-V-related businesses will emerge in Korea in the near future.

Additionally, since it supports a wide variety of cores, including Arm and RISC-V, the advantage of IAR Embedded Workbench is that engineers can significantly improve development efficiency by using a single development environment even when using multiple devices.

Additionally, you can easily improve code quality by leveraging the additional features of static and dynamic analysis of your code.

■ What are IAR's future strategies and vision?

I arrived in Korea yesterday (the day of the interview). I saw a lot of really cool electric cars from Hyundai and Kia on the road. IAR has good relationships with not only automakers but also many automotive component manufacturers in the automotive market.

Accordingly, the business of many electric vehicle-related IARs, such as battery management systems and charging equipment, is expected to increase not only in Korea but also globally.