Primary research from the show floor — booth-by-booth crowd density, demo quality, and investment implications. All observations are Jeff's direct channel checks. Not financial advice.
The Clear Winners
Cadence (CDNS) had the highest booth traffic of the entire show — standing room only. Tensilica DSP IP is inside virtually every edge AI chip. Synopsys (SNPS) was a strong #2. The EDA duopoly is the ultimate picks-and-shovels play for edge AI — they collect royalties regardless of which hardware company wins.
The Ecosystem Confirmation
StereoLabs had the best demo quality of any startup — real-time 3D mapping running on NVIDIA Jetson hardware. Every StereoLabs camera sold = NVDA Jetson unit sold. AMD's edge AI APU story is real but 12–18 months from software maturity. Lattice's moat confirmed by Micron co-branding and thin Efinix traffic.
The Emerging Themes
Three separate companies (Efinix, Alif, Microchip) all pitching "AI + MCU on one chip" — this market is real. BrainChip's radar demo is a new positive data point for neuromorphic computing. The UCIe/advanced packaging theme showed up at multiple booths (Qualitas, Winbond 3DCubS) — chiplet transition is accelerating.
Thermal detection demo — edge AI inference on ST silicon
Face recognition kiosks, NFL logo co-branding, strong ecosystem presence
Micron co-branding — low-power edge FPGA with integrated memory
Versal/ROCm talk — 9-slide deep dive on edge physical AI strategy
Packed crowd — Tensilica edge AI demos drawing the most traffic on the floor
NPX6 NPU demo — lighter crowd than Cadence but still strong
System-in-Package FPGA with integrated LPDDR4/HyperRAM — Lattice's closest private competitor
AI-native MCU — Arm Cortex-M55 + A32 + Ethos-U55 NPU on one chip
Akida neuromorphic AI — Radar & Comms demo is new positive data point
Silicon-proven PHY IP for edge AI — UCIe v2.0 die-to-die IP is the key product
NOR Flash + 3DCubS stacked memory — emptiest booth of the show
ZED stereo cameras — 'A New Era For Physical AI' — best demo quality of the show
Atlas Explorer 2.0 — RISC-V SoC design platform, busy aisle location
Robotics AI software — AMD + Arm + Siemens + Faraday ecosystem partners