It seems like more and more engineers are graduating from universities, yet we still need more. There are a few reasons for this. First, there’s simply a demand for hardware and software engineers as our devices become “electrified.” And second, the universities are doing a less than stellar job of getting their graduates ready to dive right in. How do we fix these issues? Those are just some of the points we covered on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast , where my guest was Dr. Khaled Benk...
Sep 13, 2023•12 min
ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance, and it’s something we are hearing a lot about lately. However, in my role as our industry’s devil’s advocate, I want to know if this is a real thing, or just a company line from some of the players in our industry. To try and vet that out, I spoke to Stacy Mendez, Avnet’s director of Global Strategic Planning and ESG. Stacy explained what ESG means, what Avnet’s take is on it, and why it’s a real thing. Hear what she had to say on this week’s...
Sep 06, 2023•12 min
Speech recognition on an FPGA? That doesn’t sound like the most effective path, but Bill Jenkins, of Achronix had a different opinion. Hear his take on why the FPGA is the right way to go for this application on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast .
Aug 30, 2023•12 min
We say all the time that any system can be hacked, and this week’s Embedded Executives podcast guest is someone who can get into your system. Ken Westin, CISO of Panther Labs , is who we'd call a white-hat hacker. He hacks for good reasons, sometimes to follow a bad hacker and return data, and sometimes to help close up holes in a system. Nonetheless, this is an interesting interview and worth a listen....
Aug 23, 2023•13 min
Having a standard that everyone can design to makes markets take off. Open source, both hardware and software, is nothing new. But when paired with AI, it is relatively new. Intel is trying to provide that API for people to design to with its OneAPI initiative . Obviously, you can go that route and run with Intel hardware. But you’re not locked into Intel. You can use the hardware of your choice, assuming that hardware manufacturer conforms to the API. Joe Curley, Intel’s Vice President and Gene...
Aug 16, 2023•12 min
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—John Deere is a technology leader that sells agriculture equipment, not the other way around. This week, I spoke to Maya Sripadam, a Senior Product Manager at Blue River Technology , a John Deere Company, about autonomous vehicle design. It’s not automobiles, but it’s certainly related. In some ways, agriculture is easier than automotive autonomy, and in some ways it’s more difficult. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast ....
Aug 09, 2023•11 min
Gallium nitride technology has been in the news quite a lot over past couple of years. It’s being touted as a far superior alternative to some of the competing technologies, particularly those that are silicon-based. However, there’s been some buzz lately that GaN is not a reliable technology. To get to the truth, I spoke to Denis Marcon, the General Manager of Innoscience Europe on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . Innoscience is one of the leaders in GaN technology and its components....
Aug 02, 2023•9 min
Big announcement from the Biden administration—the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark . In its simplest form, it’s a logo/sticker that goes onto any compliant IoT device. In its most complex form, designers need to understand what this standard is all about. Hence, Steve Hanna, a Distinguished Engineer at Infineon and also the Chair of the Product Security Working Group in the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) was my guest on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . Steve explained what this means today...
Jul 26, 2023•10 min
AI is here and it’s everywhere. However, AI is not the end game. AI is used to reach the end game, whatever that happens to be. That’s somewhat of a paradigm shift for today’s design community who appear to be developing for the application of AI, when there really isn’t one. To confirm my thoughts, I spoke to Jérôme Gigot, a senior director of AIoT at Ambarella on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . Tune in to hear what he had to say....
Jul 19, 2023•9 min
Compute Express Link, aka CXL, is a low-latency, cache-coherent interconnect that connects processors, memory, and other accelerator devices. It’s built on top of PCI Express. Over the past couple of years, it’s been emerging as the winner in the interface wars. If you are not familiar with this spec, you need to know it, understand it, and potentially design to it. To get a better understanding of this relatively new specification, I spoke to Mark Orthodoxou, the Vice President of Strategic Mar...
Jul 12, 2023•15 min
Energy harvesting has been with us for quite some time, but it has not achieved the lofty goals that industry insiders predicted. However, it’s still making inroads into applications that make the most sense. To understand what those applications are and how it should work, I spoke to Paul Davis, Vice President of Product Management at Atmosic Technologies on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast ....
Jun 28, 2023•12 min
Software-defined storage is a relatively new technology. It does the same job as the large storage box, but without the large storage box. Huh? Yup, that’s right. It didn’t make sense to me at first either, but I went to an expert, Boyan Krosnov, the CTO and co-founder of StorPool , to get an explanation. Check it out on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast .
Jun 21, 2023•9 min
We talk a lot here about Edge-based AI and all the things that it can accomplish. But that leaves out a significant portion of the market, that being Cloud-based AI and machine learning. According to one expert, Christina Mongan, the Director of Emerging Technologies on the Innovation Ecosystem and Emerging Technologies team at Unisys, Cloud-based AI is experiencing significant growth. To understand why that’s happening and what can be expected going forward, I spoke to Christina on this week’s ...
Jun 14, 2023•10 min
We talk a lot here about Edge-based AI and all the things that it can accomplish. But that leaves out a significant portion of the market, that being Cloud-based AI and machine learning. According to one expert, Christina Mongan, the Director of Emerging Technologies on the Innovation Ecosystem and Emerging Technologies team at Unisys, Cloud-based AI is experiencing significant growth. To understand why that’s happening and what can be expected going forward, I spoke to Christina on this week’s ...
Jun 13, 2023•10 min
A few years ago, businesses reaped big benefits from federal tax cuts. However, that money needed to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out exactly how the Fed expected, and it’s putting the clamps on some of the smaller companies in our engineering space. To understand exactly what that means and the effect it’s having and will continue to have in our space, I spoke to Jeff Hibbard, the CEO IntervalZero on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast ....
Jun 07, 2023•13 min
Fast-charging an end device like a smart phone in under 10 minutes using Gallium Nitride (GaN) power components is awesome. However, it’s not as great as it sounds, for a few reasons. First, if you don’t have the latest and greatest battery technology, you may be doing damage to your battery. In addition, most of our phones are limiting the speed at which the battery can be charged, negating the advantages of GaN. To fully understand this, I spoke to Stephen Oliver, Vice President at Navitas Sem...
May 31, 2023•10 min
DRAM is DRAM, right? There’s no difference from manufacturer to manufacturer. If that’s your take, you’ll likely find yourself in trouble when it comes to your design’s memory subsystem. As Frank Henville, a Technical Manager at Apacer, told me during this week’s Embedded Executives podcast , they are quite different. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you give it a listen.
May 24, 2023•8 min
Digital RF is something you don’t hear a lot about, but it is being deployed in some of our embedded systems, including those that live at the Edge of the IoT. But, is it really digital? The technology can be somewhat confusing, so to get to the heart of the matter, I spoke with Massoud Tohidian, the CTO and Managing Partner of Qualinx B.V. , a company that specializes in this digital RF. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast ....
May 16, 2023•10 min
Semtech recently acquired Sierra Wireless . That’s a pretty big acquisition. To understand why it is was done and what it means to an embedded developer, I spoke to Pravin Desale, the Senior Vice President of IoT Engineering at Semtech on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . There are obviously synergies between the companies, but was an acquisition really the best move? You’ll hear about that and more....
May 10, 2023•9 min
The FPGA vendors would have you believe that designing with their components is a piece of cake. Connect a few dots here and there, and presto, your chip is ready to go. But we all know that’s not really the case. To understand what’s really involved, and whether this something a novice should be taking on without any real formal training, I spoke to Philipp Baechtold, the CEO of Enclustra on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . His company can either train you to do your FPGA-based design,...
May 03, 2023•8 min
Every application obviously needs some form of memory, and since every application is somewhat different, you’d expect most applications to have a dedicated memory type. That thinking would not be wrong. To that end, Infineon has worked with some other industry giants to develop a new memory type for the electrification of automobiles. To understand how this new memory differs from what’s already out there and why it’s needed, I spoke to Sandeep Krishnegowda, the Vice President of Marketing and ...
Apr 26, 2023•10 min
If you’re looking to sense vibrations, check out Taifang Technology and its elastic-wave technology. They are sensing vibrations that are so small you can’t really receive them any other way. For example, if the sensor is embedded into a automobile, it can detect immediately, within 10 ms, when contact is made with the car. It can also report if someone is trying to break into a car. But there are tons of applications outside of automotive. To understand how it works, check out this week’s Embed...
Apr 18, 2023•13 min
Most security prevention methods aim at detecting when a hack is occurring. Hence, term detection-based security. By embedded your cyber-security inside your memory subsystem, you make it prevention-based, essentially stopping the attack before it occurs. To be honest, I did not understand what that meant, so I spoke to Tom Ricoy, an officer at Cigent , to explain how it works on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast ....
Apr 11, 2023•7 min
With the voltage levels for GaN power semiconductors moving up and the levels for SiC moving down, we have an overlap, where either type of device would be suitable for the job. So which should you choose? In addition, if you’re designing an end product, how comfortable are you, knowing that many of these power devices don’t have second sources? These are some of the questions I asked of Peter Friedrichs, Infineon Technologies’ Vice President of Silicon Carbide on this week’s Embedded Executives...
Apr 05, 2023•11 min
Here we go again; 8-bit MCUs are not dead yet. I said a few years ago that I’d give this argument up, and simply wait for the official announcement, but apparently, I shouldn’t hold my breath. Who better to know if 8-bit MCUs are shipping in big (really big) volumes, but Microchip . Hence, I had a conversation with Steve Kennelly, Microchip’s Associate Director of its Medical Products Group. He was this week’s guest on our Embedded Executives podcast ....
Mar 29, 2023•10 min
Enovix is a battery company that designs, manufactures, and sells batteries with a three-dimensional cell architecture that increases energy density and maintains high cycle life. The targets for these cells could be any type of mobile device. Ashok Lahiri, Enovix’s Advisor and Co-Founder, gave me great information on why the technology works so well and where it can be used most appropriately. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to learn more....
Mar 22, 2023•10 min
Far-field voice is something that’s hard to decipher, mostly because it’s far. I know that’s overly simplistic, but it’s true. For a much better explanation of this and a detailed description on how it works, I spoke to Scott McNeese, the Director of Voice and Audio for ArkX Labs , on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . The company specializes in voice technology for consumer devices....
Mar 15, 2023•15 min
Mar 10, 2023•9 min
Infineon has partnered with a bunch of folks to simplify the lives of system developers, specifically those who want to integrate Bluetooth. Those partners include module vendors and software providers. To understand what this means, I spoke to Sivaram Trikutam, the Vice President of Infineon’s Wi-Fi product line on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast ....
Mar 08, 2023•8 min
The LoRa Alliance is an open, nonprofit association that represents the LoRaWAN standard. LoRa is growing quickly and expanding into a host of both new geographies and new applications. To see where its headed and why it’s been so successful, I spoke to the Alliance’s Chairwoman, Donna Moore, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . As a sidenote, the LoRa Alliance will be holding its first live event of 2023, LoRaWAN Live , in a couple of weeks in Orlando. And you may want to check out the ...
Mar 01, 2023•11 min
