Samtec’s Strong Presence at embedded world 2026

The embedded world Exhibition & Conference recently concluded. The event is held annually in Nuremberg, Germany and has become one of the most influential gatherings for the global embedded systems community. Since its inception in 2003, the event has grown from a modest technical meeting into a large-scale international platform where industry professionals, engineers, researchers, and decision-makers meet to exchange knowledge, showcase innovations, and discuss future trends in embedded technologies. 

Samtec has a tradition of strong presence at major shows like this, and the recent embedded world event followed this winning formula. There were many presentations and joint demonstrations. I’ll also provide a bit more backstory thanks to my post-show interview with Matt Burns of Samtec. Here are the highlights that define Samtec’s strong presence at embedded world 2026.

Around the Show Floor

Samtec and TechWay showcased Samtec’s FireFly™ technology on a new platform running at 100 Gbps (4x25G) at the TechWay booth. Samtec and Dolphin Interconnect Solutions also showcased optical connectivity in embedded systems running at PCIe 5.0 data rates at the Samtec booth.

Matt Burns presented The SGET Open Harmonized FPGA Module™ (oHFM) is Here! – Now What?!?! on Tuesday, March 10 at the Conference. Matt also presented Implementing Optical PCIe® Technology in Embedded Computing Applications at the Lecture Exhibitor’s Forum on Thursday, March 12.

Overall, Samtec’s technical experts were authors and/or presenters during the conference and exhibitor forums as well as panel discussions throughout the event.

Comments from Matt Burns – Capabilities and Lessons Learned

I had the opportunity to chat with Matt Burns, Global Director of Technical Marketing at Samtec. Matt likes the embedded world event. There were about 36,000 visitors attending this year from almost 90 countries. In Matt’s words, “it’s the biggest embedded show on the planet.” He felt all the major areas of the world were in attendance.

He mentioned that AI at the edge was a big topic at the event this year. All the major suppliers were weighing in with approaches here. Samtec aims to have strong support for edge AI System-on-Module (SoM) form factors as this is a key enabler. Matt mentioned several other emerging standards in the edge AI area that Samtec is focused on. COM-HPC, or the computer-on-module form factor standard is one.

He also mentioned PCIe6 and the Open Harmonized FPGA Modules (oHFM), the first industry SOM standard targeted for FPGAs. The central theme of our discussion was the increasing list of emerging standards that are enabling efforts like AI at the edge and Samtec’s focus to build interconnect solutions that enable those new standards. Simply put, smaller, faster, denser interconnect is what Samtec delivers.

In terms of Samtec’s readiness to meet these challenges Matt pointed out that the cutting-edge demands come from AI datacenter applications. The demands of AI at the edge are not at the same level, so Samtec is positioned quite well to meet those challenges in a timely manner. Matt pointed out that the performance Samtec delivered to datacenters a handful of years ago is the class of problem AI at the edge is presenting today. So, the company is ready and quite capable of meeting those challenges.

This is the “lessons learned” part of the discussion. We also discussed product lifetimes. For embedded applications, the expectation is that a deployment will be in use for 10+ years. The quality and reliability Samtec is known for works well in this environment. Matt shared that Samtec is currently celebrating its 50^th year.  That kind of staying power is what the embedded market really needs. Samtec appears to be in exactly the right place.

Matt also shared that he has been with Samtec for over 10 years. Stability seems to be prevalent at the company.

To Learn More

To summarize, Samtec is well-positioned to support the growing needs of AI at the edge for embedded applications. You can learn more about the work Samtec is doing to support key industry standards here.  You can learn more about Samtec’s FireFly technology here. You can learn more about PCIe 5.0 data rates here. And you can learn more about OHFM support here.

And that’s the story behind Samtec’s strong presence at embedded world 2026.