Embedded Computing Design

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.

AI MCU vendors have mostly been putting themselves into two camps when it comes to the ecosystem. On one side, the vendor is providing everything themselves. In the other camp, the vendor is relying on partners and the community at large to provide the ecosystem. I recently spoke to Steve Tateosian, SVP of Industrial MCUs, IoT, Wireless, and Compute Business at Infineon, as the company just announced a bunch of AI MCUs and I wanted to find out which camp he was residing in. Find out on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

In a rare move, I had two guests join me for this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, but for a good reason. I was joined by Mohammed Dogar, Vice President and Head of Global Business Development and Ecosystem at Renesas Electronics, and Sakya Dasgupta, Founder and CEO of EdgeCortix.

With a new offering hitting the shelves, I thought it was a good time to catch up with Jason Kridner, the Co-Founder and Board President of BeagleBoard.org.

The Embedded Kit recently conducted a survey to understand the biggest challenges facing an embedded developer. You would think those challenges are obvious, and some of them are, but the survey uncovered some fairly interesting areas that are not so obvious.

Do you understand the metrology that applies to semiconductor manufacturing? I know I certainly didn’t, and found out how little I knew about this essential technology when I spoke to David Doyle, the President and Managing Director of Heidenhain Corp.
 

The LoRa Alliance recently conducted a user study to see how far LoRaWAN technology has penetrated into the community. If you’re not familiar, LoRaWAN is a low-power wide-area network that has a range that can be measured in miles.

Are SOMs and COMs the same thing? Some people would say yes, but in reality, they are not. So, what’s the difference. To get a better understanding of the matter, I spoke to Matthew Burns, a Global Director at Samtec on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. The second part of this discussion is which is appropriate for your application. Tune in to find out.

Have you ever heard of an isolator without a power supply? I hadn’t either, until now, sort of. That’s not exactly what Infineon is launching, but it’s close enough that I needed to have a conversation with Daniel Callen, Infineon’s Sr. Manager in the Power IC Group to understand exactly what the company is launching.

If your application is in solid-state relays, industrial automation (PLCs), or commercial HVAC controllers, this is a conversation you should hear. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

MEMS have been used in lots of sensors and even in microphones. But, until now, I hadn’t seen them used in speakers. xMEMS Labs is one vendor that’s doing just that, and the sound is incredible. When you hear how it works, it really makes a lot of sense. And if you listen to this podcast, you will hear exactly how it works. Check out my discussion with Mike Housholder, the Vice President of Business Development at xMEMS Labs in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

There’s a new sheriff in town when it comes to the Z-Wave Alliance, a newly formed standards development organization. The new Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Z-Wave Alliance is Avi Rosenthal, whose day job is the Managing Partner of bluesalve partners.

Chiplets are quite in vogue these days. But are they the solution to all your problems? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand what they are, how they work, and how you can implement them in your design. Check out this installment of DevTalk with Rich and Vin and you’ll at least have a baseline understanding of this technology.

COM Express has been around for at least a decade. While many people think of it as a standard architecture (it is), it can be customized in lots of different ways. To understand how a standard can be made custom while remaining standard, I spoke to Earle Foster, a Senior Vice President, Sealevel Systems in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. It’s actually easier than you might think.

At the recent Advantech World Partner Conference, the company made a serious focus on two key themes:

• Edge evolution, which is all about shaping the future of embedded and emerging businesses;
• Working with partners, with solutions from Edge to Cloud.

It was a couple of months ago, but it feels like yesterday that I was at the Advantech World Partner Conference, held at the company’s headquarters in Taiwan. As a refresher, the event is held live, in-person, but much of the content is captured and available virtually after the fact.

A few years ago, Microsoft acquired Express Logic, who’s key product was the ThreadX operating system. Fast forward to today, and Microsoft has released that operating system to the open-source community.

We appear to be over the hump between hype and reality when it comes to GaN technology. Components and end products are readily available. But according to David Snook, the product line manager for  GaN products at Texas Instruments (TI), we are just scratching the surface of where GaN’s potential lies. Hear more in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

This is the time of year for predictions: What do you think will happen in 2024? 
 

Timing devices within embedded systems are likely the most important components that you don’t know anything about. That’s a paraphrase from Piyush Sevalia, a Vice President at SiTime, and it’s certainly very true.