Embedded Computing Design

A few years ago, businesses reaped big benefits from federal tax cuts. However, that money needed to come from somewhere.

While Rich and Vin usually believe they all the answers to all the design-related questions, that may not always be the case. For example, when the question of where to begin your AI-based design came up, the “experts” felt in was prudent to bring in someone even more expert. In this case, that was Stuart Feffer, of Renesas.

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.

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.

The judges have met and the votes are in. I’m pleased to announce the latest round of Embedded Computing Design’s Best in Show winners for the Automate 2023 Show.

PoE switches designed for outdoor use in smart buildings and cities enable services ranging from public Wi-Fi and video surveillance to connected streetlights that increasingly need better reliability and cybersecurity protection. Extending the industry’s family of PoE switches with the high industry-standard outdoor protection for these applications, Microchip Technology has developed the PDS-204GCO switch that adds increased cyber protection plus the redundancy required for high network availability in mission-critical applications with long-distance connectivity. It also complies with the high outdoor industry-standards.

Navitas Semiconductor, one of the leaders in gallium nitride (GaN) power ICs and silicon carbide (SiC) technology, recently launched a family of ICs that deliver unprecedented levels of performance and integration. Dubbed GaNSense Control, the devices feature high-frequency quasi-resonant (HFQR) flybacks supporting QR, DCM, CCM and multiple-frequency, hybrid-mode operations, with frequencies up to 225 kHz.

AdaCore, a provider of software development and verification tools, recently launched its RecordFlux technology, designed to ease the development and security of binary communication protocols.

Empower Semiconductor, a supplier of integrated voltage regulators (IVRs), has commenced production and customer shipments of its quad-output step-down converters that combine what it claims is the industry’s highest power density and fastest transient response. The EP71xx series of power management ICs takes advantage of the company’s high-speed power architectures to eliminate all external components and deliver a compact, high performance solution.

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?

Some new single-board computers (SBCs) from ASUS IoT up the ante in terms of performance for industrial Edge AI applications.

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.

AI and machine learning are relatively new technologies in the embedded space. And the only way an application space can grow is by having a robust ecosystem. Some may argue that such an ecosystem already exists for AI, while others say that developers should wait a bit before diving in.

I generally don’t write about finished consumer products; rather, I stick to the components and technologies inside. However, it’s always nice to see when the technologies we cover come together to make a great product. And that’s exactly the case in the Soundcore Motion Boom Plus speaker.

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.

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.

When you think of NI, you might think about LabVIEW, its flagship software, a graphical programming tool that engineers have used for the past 30 years to develop automated research, validation, and production test systems. And you wouldn’t be wrong in your thinking.

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.

The Python programming language is quite popular these days and carries a vast ecosystem. It has a large community, and access to different sets of packages and libraries that are highly mature. That includes things like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and the different types of data analysis and processing elements that are required to handle these applications.

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.