We are still in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nobody knows that better than the folks in the Seattle area, one of the first hot spots in the U.S. Anthony Ambrose, President and CEO of Data I/O is based in Redmond, Wash., so he, along with the majority of his employees, have been dealing with issues like work-from-home for quite some time. While it’s far from ideal, the company has learned to operate in this manner. Check out this Special Edition Embedded Executives podcast to hear how they...
Apr 16, 2020•8 min
Decentralized power is a phenomenon that’s starting to hit the automotive sector. Is it better to have lower power levels in more places in the car, as opposed to one centralized place? Hmm, I’m not sure, as I think I can make a pretty argument for either solution. Rather than attempt a guess, I went right to an expert for this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . That expert is Patrick Wadden, Vicor's Global Vice President of Automotive Business Development. He explains which is the better appr...
Apr 15, 2020•10 min
In our Special Edition of the Embedded Executive podcasts, we are interviewing execs to see how they are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, only from an engineering workforce perspective (we’ll leave the politics to others). This edition is with a CEO who is smack in the middle of the US’s worst hotspot, New York City. Sendyne CEO John Milios describes what it’s like handling his engineering team.
Apr 14, 2020•7 min
The COVID-19 pandemic obviously hits different people in different ways, depending on a host of factors, which have all been discussed at length (and then some and then some) by the mainstream media. Here at Embedded Computing Design, we’re trying to understand how it has affected the engineering community solely from a work perspective. To that end, we will be conducting interviews with our Embedded Executives to see how they and their design teams are coping with the “new normal.” Today, I spo...
Apr 09, 2020•10 min
The Internet of Secure Things Alliance (IoXT) is pushing a common (and obvious) goal for our industry. They want to keep all of our connected devices secure. How do they do that, who belongs to the Alliance, and what does the future hold? These are the questions I asked of David Kleidermacher in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . David sits on the Alliance’s Board, and is also the Vice President of Engineering and Head of Android Security and Privacy at Google....
Apr 08, 2020•11 min
We are in the midst of a global pandemic thanks to COVID-19, aka Coronavirus. It’s turned people’s lives completely upside down. But engineers and developers, like many people, still have jobs to do. How that gets done in this time of social distancing is interesting at best. I discussed this issue with Rob Oshana, Vice President of Software R&D for Edge Processing, NXP in this week’s Special Edition of the Embedded Executives podcast ....
Apr 01, 2020•7 min
Reliability is a subjective feature of a product. And we’ve come to accept certain levels for products that are frankly, below what they should be. One example is waterproofing. The technology is available today to protect our products, but for various reasons, we give in to sub-par products. In this week’s week’s Embedded Executives podcast , I discuss this topic with Stephen Gold, the Chief Commercial Officer for HZO ....
Mar 25, 2020•10 min
Inferencing is a hot topic. Let’s start with “what is inferencing?” Then, how do you benchmark inferencing? That’s the topic du jour in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast , with guest Geoff Tate is CEO and co-founder of Flex Logic . We also get into whether some vendors are trying to rig the system.
Mar 18, 2020•8 min
Test tools can be expensive; in some case, very expensive. But if your needs don’t extend to the leading edge, you may find that there are some much lower cost tools available. That’s an area that Digilent specializes in. And according to Steve Johnson, Digilent’s President and General Manager in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast , you may be surprised that most of your needs will be covered....
Mar 11, 2020•7 min
Security has been top of mind for a long time, long enough that someone should be doing something about it. Most experts will tell you that the industry is doing something about it, and more than just something. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I discussed this topic with Mike Nicholson, Embedded Software/Systems Architect, MultiTech . While chatting, Mike revealed that MultiTech is sponsoring a Hackathon , where they are encouraging the community to into the company’s latest IoT deve...
Mar 04, 2020•8 min
Everyone wants their personal device to run longer on a charge. While many of the processor vendors have made incremental improvements, Ambiq Micro seems to have turned the equation on its head, running at performance levels that are more than adequate, but consume far less power. Coming on as a repeat guest of our Embedded Executives podcast to provide an update on the technology is Scott Hanson, Founder and CTO of Ambiq Micro ....
Feb 26, 2020•9 min
Yup, 5G is still two or three quarters away. Have you heard that before? I know I have. But more importantly, when will it become mainstream in the industrial sector, where things tend to take far longer, for good reasons. This is the first of many questions I asked of Harald Remmert, the Senior Director of Research and Innovation at Digi International in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.
Feb 19, 2020•8 min
The electrification of the automobile is an amazing phenomenon. Things that were in the super luxury cars a few years ago are now mainstream. To understand what’s next in the automobile, I had a conversation with Joseph Notaro the Vice President of Worldwide Automotive Strategy and Business Development for On Semiconductor in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.
Feb 12, 2020•6 min
MultiTech is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. That’s quite an achievement in our space, where vendors so often get swallowed up by larger vendors or they simply go away. I had the opportunity to discuss this milestone with Matt Sharma, whose dad started the company 50 years ago. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, Matt and I discussed what it takes to keep a company vibrant for such a long time.
Feb 05, 2020•7 min
Like the case with many software products, there are a host of free design tools available for things like GUI development. Crank Software is one vendor that sells such tools. So the obvious question for me was, why should I pay for tools if I can get them for free? This was the first of many questions I asked of Jason Clarke, the founder and vice president of Crank Software in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.
Jan 29, 2020•8 min
Open control systems and open architectures aren’t the mainstream in the industrial sector, but maybe they should be. That’s the opinion of Yuri Chamarelli, a Lead Product Specialist at Phoenix Contact in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Hear the reasons why, and see if you agree.
Jan 22, 2020•8 min
We can talk about embedded security until we’re blue in the face. At some point, the developer has to step up and take charge of the situation. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I interviewed Frédéric Thomas, the Vice President of Technology for Kudelski IoT. We started by looking at the holes in the security infrastructure, and went from there.
Jan 15, 2020•8 min
You can make a case that LoRa is the perfect medium to outfit a smart building. It may not be able to handle every task, but it can do more than you might think. To that end, I spoke with Byron BeMiller, a Vertical Marketing Director for Smart Buildings at Semtech and also Head of the LoRa Alliance’s Smart Building Working Group in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.
Dec 18, 2019•10 min
The definition of “low power” can differ based on your application. Low power for an industrial system supplier can differ greatly from that of a medical device maker. Regardless, I think we can agree that power levels are coming down, but not at the rate that users and OEMs would like. To that end, the designers at InnoPhase have developed a power-reduction technique for wireless connection devices that’s pretty innovative. That’s where the discussion began in this week’s Embedded Executives po...
Dec 12, 2019•11 min
Neural networks are complex. Mindtech makes tools that help create vision data sets for training these neural nets. In this week’s Embedded Executive podcast with Chris Longstaff, Vice President of Product Management at Mindtech, I discussed what an engineer would do with the data set once in-hand.
Dec 04, 2019•7 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Our embedded industry is bursting with standards. One of the more popular ones, especially when discussing industrial specifications, is Industry 4.0. But, we’ve been stuck on 4.0 for quite some time. With that said, what’s next? Is it Industry 4.1? 5.0? Or something else? That’s the question I posed of someone in the know, Dusty Kramer, the recently appointed CEO of Eurotech in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.
Nov 20, 2019•10 min
There are obvious phases of any design. You know them as well as I do, but the one that doesn’t seem to garner its share of attention is test. It could be because test is hard and not well understood. Or it could be because a percentage of engineers feel that test should be handled by the test engineers exclusively. To better understand what’s meant by this process and how it fits into the overall cycle, I spent some time with Joseph Sawicki, Executive Vice President of Mentor IC EDA , in this w...
Nov 14, 2019•8 min•Season 2Ep. 12
The power that’s required to charge electric vehicles is quite high. And when you add wireless charging, the issues grow significantly. But what exactly are those electric vehicle charging issues, and how do we solve them? And why are people afraid to charge their batteries to 199 percent? That’s just the beginning of the discussion I had with Dr. Phil Lessner, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for KEMET in this week’s Embedded Executive interview....
Nov 06, 2019•8 min
High-performance computing has a lot to do with complex calculations performed in parallel. However, in the embedded space, it has different, and potentially more challenging, definitions. To understand where high-performance computing fits in the industrial IoT sector, I spent this week's Embedded Executives podcast with Michael Duhamel, Vice President at SECO .
Oct 30, 2019•7 min•Season 2Ep. 11
The semiconductor content in today’s (and tomorrow’s) automobiles continues to grow. That’s a good thing for lots of people. Unfortunately, that list includes the bad guys, as more end points appear in the vehicle, more entry points become vulnerable to hackers. The question I posed to this week’s Embedded Executive, Andrew Longhurst, Managing Director, Wittenstein High Integrity Systems , is simply, “what do we do about that?” Tune in to find out....
Oct 22, 2019•6 min
Many people claim that analog is a dying technology. While I’m not in that camp, I want to get to the bottom of the discussion. Hence, I posed the topic to David Dwelley, a Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Maxim Integrated . David has a birds-eye view on state-of-the-art analog design. Tune in to hear his response.
Oct 15, 2019•7 min
Open source is no longer a fad or something for Makers. As Dave Hughes, the Founder and CEO of HCC Embedded says, “it is now a force in our industry.” If you’re not on the bus, it’s time to get on. To hear everything else Dave had to say about open-source software, check out this week’s Embedded Executive podcast.
Oct 09, 2019•8 min
Analytics is the key to having a successful IoT platform, particularly in the industrial space. However, analytics doesn’t seem to have the focus in the development community that it should. Why is that so? That’s what I asked Tom Yates, Vice President of Products at Nubix , who deals with this topic on a daily basis. Tune in for more.
Oct 02, 2019•7 min
We seem to be on a never-ending ride to reduce power. It seems like whatever the IC vendors can provide, the OEMs want more (or in this case, less). Is that fair? Maybe. Will the cycle continue down a similar path? Probably, but to know for sure, I interviewed Larry Blackledge, General Manager of Qorvo's Programmable Power Management business to see how low we can go. Tune in for more.
Sep 25, 2019•8 min
5G is coming. 5G is here. 5G is the greatest thing since sliced bread. There is so much information and misinformation regarding 5G that I thought it made sense to bring on an expert who could debunk some of the myths around 5G. In this week’s Embedded Executive interview, I spoke with Sylvia Lu, who is the Senior 5G Technical Lead for 5G at u-blox , as well as a member of the UK5G Advisory Board. Tune in for more.
Sep 19, 2019•8 min
