Embedded Computing Design

I feel like we have been two years away from fully autonomous vehicles for the last five years. It gets difficult to differentiate between what’s accurate and what’s fiction. To try to get at the truth, I spoke to Avijit Sinha, the newly appointed President of Wind River for this week’s Embedded Executive podcast. We get into the hardware, the software, and the standards. Note that Avijit was promoted just after we recorded this podcast!

Are you familiar with Raspberry Pi? Of course you are. But are you aware of all the things that you can do with it, or should do with it? First, if you think it’s a low-compute-power board, you are mistaken. Second, if you think you can’t go to production with a Pi, you’d be mistaken again. If you don’t believe me, listen to what Eben Upton, the Founder of Raspberry Pi had to say in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Memory is typically a very simple component in your embedded system—or is it? I spent some time with Barry Blixt, a Director for Microchip’s memory business. We went through a list of typical memory “myths” to determine what’s true and what’s not true. Does memory wear out? How about rotating memory? These are some of the topics we covered. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

In the golden era of electrical engineering, when yours truly was a budding designer, we worked with a processor, like an 8051 or an 8085, and we wrote some code to go with it. Programmable log? It existed, but those things were too darn expensive for what we called mainstream or mid-range applications. 

Fast forward to today, and you’d be hard pressed to come up with application that doesn’t make use of programmable logic.

In this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin, we look at today’s landscape of FPGAs, particularly those that are, in theory, aimed at the mid-range of the market. And we bring in a special guest, Gordon Hands, a Senior Director with Lattice Semiconductor.

When it comes to writing code, we have a manpower problem. While that’s true for most aspects of the embedded engineering/development space, it’s particularly true for those folks writing firmware, which is one of the most critical, yet least glamorous parts of our profession. What’s the solution? Is it AI, to have the code written for us? That’s one of the potential solutions.  Listen to a few more in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with Bill Merkel,  Vice President of Business Development at USA Firmware.

When content gets posted to Embedded Computing Design that’s latest “The Basics of …” or “XYZ 101,” the content usually gets tons of page views. I always wondered why that was the case. Are our engineers not as knowledgeable as we think? Are they just checking to make sure their assumptions are correct? I decided this would be a good topic for Vin, who teaches classes in some of these basics. Check out this edition of DevTalk with Rich and Vin to see the response.

When it comes to the ecosystem, particularly around AI, you need all the parts to be available if you want to develop a system. We know that ecosystems forever continue to evolve, but it’s safe to dive into the waters at this point, according to Mohammed Dogar, the Vice President and Head of Global Business Development and Ecosystem at Renesas Electronics.  In this week’s Embedded Executive podcast, we discuss, among other things, how the AI ecosystem has evolved, and what users can expect at this point.

Wearable medical devices are poised to take off. I mean, really take off, thanks to a few different drivers, such as the aging population, the pandemic, and some concessions from the insurance companies.
 

There’s a lot going on in the background of your design. In fact, in most cases, 90% (or more) of the development time is spent on things other than the HMI. However, it’s that HMI that gets all the attention because it’s the part of the design that the end user actually sees and interacts with.

Admit it—you’re confused by all the “information” that’s circulating regarding how to design a system with AI. The first thing that must be clear is this: you are not designing an AI system.

Developers struggle with how to manage the power in their end devices. There’s obviously a tradeoff between performance and how much/how long to keep components powered up. It’s obviously application-specific, but it’s important to make the right decision.

It’s the little things in life, right? In the case of NXP’s new top-side cooling for RF power, that’s exactly right.

We talk about security a lot here at Embedded Computing Design. If it’s not the number one subject, it’s certainly in the top three.

Infineon recently held its annual OktoberTech event, where it showcased the company’s vast array of technologies as well as those of its customers. Embedded Computing Design’s Rich Nass sat down with Infineon Americas President Maher Matta to discuss things like sustainability, how to deal with such a wide range of products, and the need for an event like OktoberTech.

The Redmi design team was able to capture small size and long run times with minimal BOM.

We have an engineering shortage. Anyone who's familiar with our space wouldn't dispute that. And if you look at the projections, we’re going to need a whole lot more of us going forward. Why is that the case, and more importantly, what are we going to do about it?

Quantum computing raises the potential for anything to be hacked, and that includes government systems. Hence, the people behind the CHIPS Act want to make sure that the money that’s used for semiconductor development is being used in the areas that it deems most important.
 

Quantum computing can be a very complex area. Many experts will tell you that it could be as long as a decade before quantum computers actually appear on the scenes.
 

If you’re a consumer, 5G is likely in your universe. If you’re working on the industrial side, you’re likely not seeing 5G at all. And it may be many years before it’s even available in limited deployments. Why is that? That’s the question I asked of Olivier Pauzet, the EVP of Strategy for Sequans Communications in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Are you wondering what would be considered a practical application for AI at the endpoint (the place where the data is captured)? Well, you’re in luck, because Rich is moderating a panel at Renesas’ AI Live virtual conference that specifically covers that topic.