Embedded Computing Design

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, special guest Dr. Jason Mars, associate professor of computer science at the University of Michigan joins ECD associate editor Tiera Oliver to explore how the next generation of engineers is being educated.

On this episode, the Insiders are joined by Andreas Kuehlmann, Executive Chairman and CEO of Cycuity, formerly known as Tortuga Logic, to discuss the importance of security at the chip level amidst the release of new standards and recent government involvement in the semiconductor industry via the much-talked-about CHIPS Act.
 

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich explore the imminent ratification of the MATTR standard and what opportunities it could introduce in real, regular life situations.

On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss whether the IoT is “newer” than M2M or connected embedded, or has the name just changed while the definition remains the same? Perhaps it’s not new, it’s just moved to the edge and adopted “new” capabilities.

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich are addressing the increasingly political aspect of the semiconductor supply chain issues running rampant across the globe, and the danger of those issues reaching all the way up to the semiconductor manufacturing equipment itself.

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich recap a recent visit to DesignCon 2022, where Brandon highlights one of the embedded engineering industry’s rising stars, the Compute Express Link open standard.

On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich review the recent Applied Power Electronics Conference, or APEC, as a proxy for how the industry works post-pandemic and the reality of supply chain demand.

On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the electronics industry.

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich ponder the possible reasons NVIDIA’s acquisition of Arm is on the brink of collapse.

Champions of the open-standard ISA expect it to start displacing competitive offerings en masse over the next few years. While that remains to be seen, the introduction of custom RISC-V instruction extensions, the formation industry-specific working groups, and advances in tools are redefining the technology’s true winners.

On this episode, the Insiders discuss safety-critical open source operating systems. Do the rigid requirements of safety-critical embedded applications force users to reduce the flexibility many believe is the biggest advantage of open source? And if so, why not just license a commercial offering?

On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss recent findings that show 96% of manufacturing and automation companies who responded successfully to the COVID-19 pandemic had Industry 4.0 technology in place. But how? 

On this episode the Insiders track the return of analog computing.  Mythic is a company looking to revolutionize AI computing through an  innovative matrix processor that processes analog signals in on-chip  memory before outputting them to the digital domain. Where does this tech fit today?

On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the push/pull of industry hardware standards, as support for PCI Express Gen 4 on the latest generation of Intel chipsets has created an inflection point for board- and system-level specifications that serve both legacy and emerging applications.
 

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the global chip shortage and the difference between price gouging, tough luck, and a need for innovation.

In this week’s Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich try to decide if data sheets specs are reliable, or if industry benchmarks are the only reasonably- accurate measure of component performance without actually testing them yourself.

In this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich wonder if residential solar power is really worth it. The question stems from Littelfuses’ release of 400PV Fuse series of photovoltaic solar fuses, which can be embedded directly into roof shingles or tiles. But with so much government meddling in the solar industry, and big energy looking to protect its existing interests, is it prudent, or even worth it, to bother with the technology?

In this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss Silicon Laboratories recent divestiture of its infrastructure and automotive business units to SkyWorks Solutions. The sale includes the company’s power, isolation, broadcast, timing, and other products and IP. Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle said several years ago that the company is “all-in” on IoT, and this move appears to be him keeping his word. But was it the best move?

Armv9 is here, and although it took nearly 10 years to arrive, it comes right at a major inflection point in the semiconductor industry where all of the major chipmakers have started dabbling in processor architectures outside of their heritage. The implications of this are currently being felt in more advanced use cases like the data center and high-performance computing, but the roadmap decisions of today – such as the massive emphasis on AI and ML workload processing in Armv9 that will surely continue under NVIDIA leadership – will  have significant ramifications for the embedded systems of tomorrow. And, oh yeah, what does NVIDIA’s potential stewardship of Arm mean for NVIDIA competitors who also happen to be Arm licensees, like Intel and Xilinix? Brandon and Rich discuss.