Embedded Computing Design

You’re likely aware of many of the great things AI can do for you. And I’m guessing you’ve seen many of the nefarious things it can be used for. I was just brought up to speed on one of the latter items, and it’s something you should be aware of as well. 

In my discussion with Marcus Webster, the Founder and President of Webster and Webster Associates, I learned that people are using AI to help them get jobs, and in some cases, they are jobs that they should not be getting, for security reasons. People are submitting fake resumes and even conducting fake video-based job interviews. Honestly, it’s both fascinating and scary. 

Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to learn more.

Most of the RISC-V offerings that I’ve seen have been pushing very high performance, with lots of cores and lots of chips. Upbeat Technology is taking a different tack by looking at very low power levels. 

In my discussion with Jerry Chen, Founder and CEO of Upbeat Technology, he explains the reasons for that approach, and, as you’ll hear, he tells it like it is and explains why the company partnered with SiFive. 

The applications that make sense for the Upbeat offering include always-on IoT, wearables, drones/UAVs, smart audio, predictive maintenance, and edge-AI sensors, basically anything battery-powered. Hear our discussion on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

I recently spent some time with Synaptics’ new CEO, Rahul Patel. It was at the company’s Tech Day event held in its San Jose headquarters. Rahul arrived at Synaptics after spending more than a decade at both Qualcomm and Broadcom, so he is no stranger to the semiconductor space. And that’s a good thing, because he joined at a time when the company was already in the midst of a transformation, attempting to become a major player in the Edge AI semiconductor space.

It’s not the first time this has occurred, but it is the latest—a previously commercial real-time operating system is now being offered as open source. In this case, it’s SMX from Micro Digital. 

If you’re wondering, like I was, where the company would choose to go this route, check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with Ralph More, the Founder and President of Micro Digital.

There are lots of semiconductor vendors that do a great job of providing AI hardware. But unfortunately, for many of them, their offerings end there, requiring developers to source software and tools from multiple sources. It’s no secret that designing a system with AI is complex enough. Having to go to different vendors for different pieces just adds multiple layers of complexity. 

Every IoT device should comply with the Connectivity Standard Alliance (CSA) Matter standard, but we know that’s not the case. For some developers, doing that is a no-brainer. However, there are some developers who struggle with the process. For that latter group, the CSA recently released a Matter-compliant platform certification that should help them get to market far more quickly. 

To explain how that works, I spoke to Jon Harros, who leads the Alliance Certification and Testing team at the CSA, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Jon goes through the need for the program, how it’s implemented, and what developers need to know.

Synaptics and Google have joined forces to hasten the development of low-power, AI-driven edge devices—marking a potentially significant milestone for open, efficient, and scalable compute architectures. The collaboration brings together Google Research’s new Coral machine-learning accelerator architecture and Synaptics’ deep expertise in low-power silicon design, resulting in the company’s SL2610 platform.

Compilers and ADAS aren’t often used in the same sentence. For developers, that anomaly can represent a design challenge, as compilers in general are not designed for this particular application, which also happens to be at the top of the safety and security checklist. 

To understand how these compilers should be tested and implemented, I spoke to Sjoerd van der Zwaan, the Chief Product Officer at Solid Sands, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. 

Sjoerd explains how and why compilers for ADAS are different from general compilers, and why you need to run your compiler through an appropriate series of tests to ensure compatibility.

Every once in a while, we hit a home run when it comes to bringing guests onto the DevTalk podcast, and today we did just that. 

We managed to wrangle in Hidetoshi Shibata, who has been in his current CEO role at Renesas for about six years. Toshi was very forthcoming with us, as we went through his fairly colorful past, and more importantly, the decisions he has had to make as the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in our space. 

AI at the endpoint gets yet another boost from EMASS, a fabless semiconductor company that recently emerged from stealth mode. 

Having your processing at the endpoint presents a few significant challenges, namely the amount of processing that can be made available and the ability to run from a battery. EMASS has come up with a way to do this a little differently from what’s been done previously. They can attach their RISC-V processing element to any sensor, making the device an AI accelerator. It’s a little difficult for me to put into words here, so check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, where I spent some time with Mark Goranson, EMASS’s CEO, who explains it in detail.

No matter what your end device is, be it a light bulb or a driver’s license, it needs to be secure. I don’t think we need to go through the reasons why it needs to be secure. How you do that is becoming increasingly more difficult. And you may be looking at protecting millions of devices, where each one needs its own unique identity. 

To get a handle on how you would do this, at least where you would begin this daunting task, I spoke to two experts: Patrick Carrier, Manager for Secure Solutions at Infineon, and Xin Qiu, Head of Security Solutions at CommScope. 

On this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, they lay out the need and then the process a developer would follow.

AI is a technology that generally requires a significant amount of power and high compute performance. Hence, it’s typically relegated to the Cloud or to an Edge-based computer.

Performing AI at the endpoint has not been feasible for those reasons. With ambiq’s Sub-threshold Power Optimized technology (SPOT), performing AI at the endpoint is a reality. And the doors/applications that it opens are extremely cool. 

Hear more about it in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, where I spoke to Ambiq’s Vice President of AI, Carlos Morales. Note that Ambiq just recently released the latest version of neuralSPOT, which now includes key performance enhancements specific to the company’s Apollo5 family, amongst other features, some of which are specific to AI development.

We’ve done podcasts in the past that discussed automating your code documentation. But we haven’t touched much on automating the code generation itself until now. 

On this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I spoke to Jonathan Hacker, the Founder and CTO of TeleCANesis, and that’s exactly what they do. We got into the issues of why automated coding is better than manual coding. Then we had a very interesting discussion about why you shouldn’t consider AI for code generation, at least not yet.

Designing a device that incorporates AI can be daunting, for a good reason—it’s very complex. When you push that design out to the Edge, it brings in even more challenges, both on the hardware and software sides of the equation. 

To understand what these challenges are and where a designer can turn for help, I spoke to Amir Panush, the CEO of Ceva, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. He addresses these issues on a regular basis and has a good understanding of what a designer needs to know.

Silicon Labs recently announced an MCU that has achieved the highest level of security possible to date, which is PSA Level 4. The questions you may be asking are, “What does that mean, and is this something I need to understand?” 

To get answers to these questions and many related ones, I spoke to Sharon Hagi, the Chief Security Officer at Silicon Labs, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. You may be surprised by his responses, that not every design needs this level of security.

We’re in the era of quantum computing. That brings with it a lot of great things. But at the same time, it brings some not so good things. Once again, we’re in a race to stay ahead of the bad guys to keep our systems secure. 

Folks like the experts at Infineon are doing what they can to do just that. And the best part is that they are trying to insulate their customers from having to deal with all the different measures that must be put in place. 

Hear from Erik Wood, Infineon’s Senior Director of Microcontroller Cryptography and Product Security, to see if this sounds like a fit for your design. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to learn more.

The boom coming from AI is requiring data centers to be built as fast as we can build them. To that end, there is a lot of discussion about the power that’s needed to drive these data centers. What there’s not a lot of discussion about are the interconnects that are used within these power-hungry computing camps. And that’s the specialty of Point2 Technology, a fairly new company that boasts ultra-low power interconnect solutions. 

To understand how the company’s technology works, I spoke to Sean Park, Point2’s President, CEO, and Founder, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

For as long as we’ve been designing embedded computers and consumer electronics, we’ve had a problem figuring out how to handle the heat that’s created. Known as thermal management, the problem seems omnipresent as systems become more compact, processors run faster, and so on. 

Unfortunately, many designers don’t think about thermal management until it’s too late in the design process, which further exacerbates the problem. So what’s a developer to do? That’s what I asked Carl Schlachte, the President and CEO of Ventiva, who specializes in this technology, in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

While it may not be as intimidating as it once was, antenna design can still be a make-or-break aspect of your end product. Make the antenna too big, and the end users balk. Make the antenna too small, and the device won’t function properly (and end users will balk). 

To understand where and how the antenna design should begin, I spoke with Dermot O'Shea, the CEO of Taoglas, an expert in antenna design and certification, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

TSMC recently announced its exit from the GaN space. Well, maybe “announced” is the wrong word, but they did let customers know that they will not be producing GaN devices going forward. 

Details are still coming out, so we don’t know exactly when that stoppage will occur. So what does that mean for TSMC partners who relied on them to produce their products? 

To understand what that means, I spoke to Johannes Schoiswohl, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Infineon’s GaN Business Line. Infineon may have an easier time than others making this transition, but it’s an interesting time nonetheless. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to learn more.