Embedded Computing Design

The latest wearable medical devices are designed to help consumers make better decisions regarding their care. Until recently, the space has been somewhat limited. Size and power were the two biggest constraints. Those constraints aren’t going away, but they are definitely being lessened thanks to some of the latest innovations on the semiconductor side.

To hear more about these innovations, I spoke to Andrew Baker, the Co-Founder and CEO of Orca Semiconductor, a startup in the emerging connected health arena. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to learn more.

If the software-defined vehicle (SDV) comes off as planned, life for consumers becomes a whole lot easier. “If” is the key word in that sentence, and there’s tons of debate as to when that might actually happen.
 

One of the best parts of my job is seeing products we write about being manufactured, whether it be semiconductors, boards, systems, tools, and so on. In many cases, we have to take the manufacturer's word. We can follow up with customers and suppliers, and we do, but seeing the manufacturing actually taking place, and watching the products roll down an assembly line is quite gratifying.

Is Wi-Fi even a thing anymore? What I mean by that is, at least from the users’ perspective, Wi-Fi just works, and that’s not much to think about. However, behind the scenes, a lot has to happen to make that “ubiquitousness” happen. To get a better understanding of what is happening back there, I spoke to Sivaram Trikutam, the Vice President of Wi-Fi Products for Infineon. We get into the latest standards, including Matter, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Can batteries last for 40 years? And what is the application that would require such a timeline?

That’s the discussion I had with Sol Jacobs, the Vice President and General Manager of Tadiran Batteries.

The topic arose after the company’s recent whitepaper crossed my desk. To understand whether this was fact or simply a click-bait headline, I went to the source. Hear what Sol had to say on the matter in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

No trip to COMPUTEX would be complete without a visit to the AVerMedia booth. And as usual, the products and demos on display did not disappoint. If you’re not familiar with Taiwan-based AVerMedia, the company has been designing and manufacturing leading-edge AV peripherals and professional capturing, streaming, and embedded vision solutions for about 30 years. That would also include high-definition video and real-time AV products.

Why would you put sensors and power components into the same business unit if you’re a component supplier? That’s what I asked Adam White, President of Infineon’s Power and Sensor Systems Division.

After hearing his response, it made perfect sense—today’s sensors are quickly growing in number and power consumption in the data center, in AI applications, and lots of other places. So it only makes sense to put those engineers in the same room. Adam explained it better than I could, citing lots of power numbers and energy requirements needed by various applications, and how they vary in different regions. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Memory for automotive applications needs to be different from memory that’s intended for other applications. Why is that? I could not answer that question, so I turned to Michael Basca, the Vice President of Embedded Products and Systems within Micron’s Embedded Business Unit. As you might expect, Michael had no trouble answering the question. Hear what he had to say on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

COMPUTEX stands tall as a place for our industry heavyweights to puff out their chests and talk about their company’s latest and greatest technologies. The Keynote Addresses at this year’s event, held last week in Taipei, Taiwan, lived up to that billing

Is it possible to develop a car that would never crash? We’re talking about a physical crash, not a software crash. According to Chet Babla, Indie Semiconductor’s Senior Vice President, it is. Being a non-believer, I had Chet as my guest on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Chet walked me through exactly what needs to happen to make this phenomenon a reality. Check it out.

Synopsys is all in on generative AI, and it’s putting its money where its mouth is by creating a Center for Generative AI within the company. Being that I had no idea what this meant, how it would work, or what it would mean to the industry, I invited the Center’s Executive Director, Stelios Diamantidis, to join me on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. He laid out what the Center looks like today, and what it will mean to the entire industry going forward.

In this episode of DevTalk with Rich (Nass) and Vin (D’Agostino), Matt Johnson, the CEO of Silicon Labs joins us. It’s a lively discussion, starting in rural Maine, and ending with “Should engineers be concerned that AI will take their jobs?” Listen in for some interesting responses.

Understatement: Raspberry Pi is popular with the embedded community.

Myth: Raspberry Pi is not a secure platform.

I believed in that myth until a recent conversation with Alex Kaay, the CTO and co-founder of Zymbit. The beauty of the Pi is in its simplicity, but don’t equate simplicity with unsecure. Alex walked me through why people's beliefs are what they are, and more importantly, why those beliefs are misguided. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast and see if you’re a believer.

There have been many changes at NI recently, particularly with the fairly recent acquisition of the company by Emerson. But one thing that appears to remain unchanged is the company’s allegiance to test and measurement.

One area of technology that many vendors and technologies are gunning for is smart metering, whether commercial or residential electric meters, water meters, or something else.

The number of potential meters is HUGE. But which technology makes the most sense for this application? As you might expect, it depends on who you talk to. For this podcast, I spoke to Phil Beecher, the President and CEO of the Wi-SUN Alliance. Phil explained why Wi-SUN makes the most sense in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Medical wearables can greatly enhance the quality of life for many people. This can be done by instantly accessing medical information and potentially alerting a professional, or simply tracking stats on an individual.

According to Andrew Burt, the Director of Product Line Management of Digital Healthcare at Analog Devices, his company has produced a kit for developers who are coming up with ideas on how to pull in this data and then what to do with it. It’s pretty amazing what can be done, and it’s not nearly as hard as you might think. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Correction: The ADI wearable device referred to in the podcast has received FDA 510(k) clearance, not FDA approval.

In this era of AI, designers have to think differently about every aspect of their projects. That includes the memory subsystem. To that end, Micron had a series of announcements to help facilitate AI, particularly on mobile devices (most compact UFS package, collaboration with Samsung, and Magic6 Pro smartphone). But beyond each subsystem, there’s just so much that needs to be learned and still so much that’s unknown. That’s where this week’s Embedded Executives podcast takes us. On this episode, I spoke to Mark Montierth, a Corporate VP and the General Manager of Micron’s Mobile Business Unit.

Welcome to a slightly different version of our DevTalk with Rich and Vin podcast. In addition to doing our traditional tech talks, which you’ve clearly told us that you enjoy, we will be producing discussions with CEOs. But we won’t be going through the usual company blah, blah, blah. We’re going to dig a little deeper and find out what really drives these individuals, who are obviously very determined, or they wouldn’t be in the positions they are in. And we told them that to be a guest, they couldn’t limit or filter our questions in any way; anything and everything is on the table. 

To get us started, we spent some time with Ron Konezny, the CEO of Digi International.

Pre-compliance testing is a phenomenon that should be a no-brainer, but for lots of reasons—none of them good—it’s not always done. When you’re doing a design that requires RF and you don’t do the testing, you’re really asking for trouble. That goes double for a product that’s going to ship into multiple geographies. To understand how this process should occur, I spoke to Paul Denisowski, a Product Management Engineer at Rohde & Schwarz, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Engineers are usually good at engineering, but writing? That’s a different story. In many cases, lacking the ability to write well can hurt engineers. This rears its ugly head when these engineers are job hunting. Having mis-spellings and bad grammar on a resume is a huge red flag. This is particularly true for some real cherry jobs attracting numerous applications.

To understand what this means and the effect it could have on an engineer’s future, I brought back Marcus Webster, who is the principal of Webster & Webster Associates. Marcus last spoke to us about the engineering shortage. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.