Embedded Computing Design

Most people in our embedded industry are familiar with Steve Sanghi, who has been the CEO of Microchip for more than thirty years. Steve took over the company in its not-so-successful early days and brought it to the great heights we know today, as a multi-billion dollar semiconductor powerhouse.

Steve stepped down from the CEO role a few years ago and is now doing lots of philanthropic work and writing a few books. We were thrilled and honored to have Steve join us on the latest episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin.

What is rad-hard memory, and when and where should it be used? And what makes it different from conventional memory? The answers may seem obvious, but that’s not the case.

That’s exactly why I spoke to Helmut Puchner, Vice President and Fellow in the Aerospace and Defense division of Infineon Technologies in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Obviously, such memories cost more, so you want to be sure you understand when they need to be deployed and when they don’t.

The automobile's in-cabin user experience (UX) is undergoing some serious changes. We’re nearing the point where the automobile can be viewed as an office or entertainment center that also transports you from point A to point B.

With all those changes, it’s important to ensure that these non-mission-critical functions communicate with the mission-critical tasks at some point. To make sense of this, I spoke to Chet Babla, a Senior Vice President at indie Semiconductor on his week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

For the automakers, weight reduction in electric vehicles (EVs) is at or near the top of their engineering priority lists. EVs are traditionally heavier than their non-electric counterparts even if those weight reductions come in small increments, every little bit counts.

The Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) provides a new approach to cybersecurity and outlines a great model for developers to follow. Like the name implies, you should trust no one, at least initially, and assume that all networks and traffic are potential threats.
 

Maher Matta, the President of the Americas division of Infineon Technologies agreed to join Rich and Vin on this podcast episode. The audience will likely relate to the route taken by Maher, as he came up through the engineering ranks, starting as a bench engineer. As you might expect, there were some bumps and bruises along the way. If you subscribe to the theory that the proof is in the pudding, the evidence is clear—the reign under Maher is working. The company is thriving and is a leader in many of the spaces in which it competes. Hear what Maher had to say about his rise through the ranks.

Testing high-power batteries, like those used in EVs, can be a tricky endeavor. It’s more complicated and, frankly, more dangerous than testing smaller, lower-voltage batteries. It makes sense that the testing of these packs could and should be left to recognized test experts, Tektronix in this case.
 

We’ve talked a lot about the software-defined vehicle. This week, we are discussing the electrification of that same automobile on the Embedded Executives podcast.As you might expect, it means removing some of the car's mechanical components and replacing them with electrical components. As Sayeed Ahmed, a director at Infineon Technologies, states, the benefits of doing that are great, but there are still some issues to be solved and some tradeoffs. It has to do with software, semiconductor technologies, and so on.

TSN is a standard that originated for video-streaming applications. But today, it’s finding a home in industrial applications, and it’s is now becoming irreplaceable.
 

The space program has come quite far in the last decade when it comes to sending people to Mars and building a colony there. If you’re wondering what it would take to accomplish that, check out the book Colonizing Mars by Frank Norris. Or, take the easy way out and check out the latest DevTalk with Rich and Vin podcast, where we invited Frank on as a guest.

We spend a lot of time talking about the software-defined vehicle (SDV), and there are two very good reasons for that. One is that is it occurring, whether you know it or not or whether you want it or not. The second reason is that it is very complex, even if you’re just dealing with the HMI, as it all ties back together at some point.

To sort through the issues, I invited Marcelo Williams, a Global Senior Director for Infineon Technologies to be my guest on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Great hardware is useless without great software, and vice versa. The hardware industry continues to evolve, as always, but the software side operates quite differently than it did in the past, thanks to the groundswell of open-source software.
 

If you’re not familiar with Zephyr, shame on you. It’s an open-source, real-time operating system (RTOS) for resource-constrained devices. That’s how it differs from Linux, which is more of a mainstream OS.
 

Avnet’s Embedded Solutions group is undergoing a change, with a new name attached to it. Known as Tria, the group will be responsible for a range of branded hardware modules, boards, and systems and all the software that comes with them. That combines the company’s vast tech support network and state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities.

As you might expect, the code base in the software-defined vehicle is growing in leaps and bounds, with more features being added and the functionality within those features growing (and becoming more complex).

Is the downside to that ballooning code base the fact that more holes are being introduced to welcome hackers?

Do you know what a software-defined vehicle (SDV) is? You likely have your definition, which may or may not be the “right” definition.

Just getting that baseline is where my discussion started with Ray Notarantonio, Infineon’s Senior Director of Vehicle User Experience in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. We explored what’s possible with an SDV, when you should expect it, and what’s holding up the various aspects.

Memory technology continues to move along at a healthy pace. Innovations continue to come, and there does not seem to be a slowdown on that horizon. Whether it’s NAND, NOR, or something else, you can expect to see advances in densities, speeds, costs, and so on.

As the complexity of our embedded systems has exploded, particularly in the automotive space, a requirements-management tool has moved into the “must-have” category.

Bluetooth has been around for a quarter century. That’s a very, very long time in technology years. It’s evolved into one of the most omnipresent standards ever produced. That said, it continues to grow with new features and enhancements, which result in new use cases.

I spoke to Shantanu Bhalerao, the Vice President of Bluetooth Products for Infineon Technologies on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to understand how that works and what's still to come for Bluetooth.

Everything is connected, everything is smart, and AI controls everything. And it all comes back to the “smart Edge.”

While these statements seem to be a bit over-arching, there’s a lot of truth to them. But building and then designing around that smart Edge can be quite tricky. Add TinyML to the equation, and it should become clearer (well, maybe).

To better understand what that means exactly, I spoke to Amir Panush, the CEO of Ceva on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.