Embedded Insiders

Send us a textOn this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss whether the IoT is “newer” than M2M or connected embedded, or has the name just changed while the definition remains the same? Perhaps it’s not new, it’s just moved to the edge and adopted “new” capabilities.Later, Brandon and Rich are joined by John Costello, Corporate Vice President of Government Affairs at Microchip Technology, to discuss the state-of-the-art vs. the state-of-the-practice and which of the two the U.S. government should be funding. The decision is all wrapped up in a piece of legislation known as the CHIPS Act. Finally, ECD Assistant Editor, Taryn Engmark, takes a peak into the future of EV charging infrastructure with Dunstan Power, Director of ByteSnap Design and Preye Ivry, network innovation engineer at Nortech Management Ltd. The three highlight the design, development, and testing of an EV discharge platform under the VehIcle-to-Grid Intelligent controL Project, also known as VIGIL.Read about VIGIL in, &q

Send us a textOn this episode, the Insiders ponder the future of embedded engineering in light of Arm’s release of its Total Solutions for IoT. How far along in the development process can engineers get virtually, before they even have silicon in their hands?Next, Brandon, Rich, and guest speakers Kurt Lender and Ishwar Agarwal from the CXL Consortium get into the nitty gritty of what Compute Express Link is, how it works, and what its future holds.Finally, associate editor Tiera Oliver enters the software development lifecycle, where, according to survey responses from PractiTest's Ninth Annual State of Testing Report, software testers in the field are reporting big changes that are paving the way for newer, more integrated testing dynamics.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textOn this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich are addressing the increasingly political aspect of the semiconductor supply chain issues running rampant across the globe, and the danger of those issues reaching all the way up to the semiconductor manufacturing equipment itself.Next, Associate Editor Tiera Oliver is joined by Pat Wilbur, Hologram CTO and Co-Founder, to talk about the retirement of 3G networks by some of the U.S.’s largest wireless carriers, also known as the 3G sunset.Finally, Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark will be providing a breakdown of three must-know secure IT technologies to fill out a good Industry 4.0-ready toolbox.For more information about Hologram's cellular connectivity options for the IoT, visit: https://www.hologram.io/For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textOn this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich recap a recent visit to DesignCon 2022, where Brandon highlights one of the embedded engineering industry’s rising stars, the Compute Express Link open standard.Next, Neil Trevett, President of the Khronos Group, joins the Insiders to discuss the recent release of Vulkan SC 1.0, a new specification based off of the Vulkan 1.2 API made specifically for the needs of safety-critical applications.Finally, ECD Associate Editor Tiera Oliver is joined by Xavier Rottenberg, scientific director for the OMUS project and Imec fellow, to discuss Imec’s recent demonstration of an ultra-sensitive, small optomechanical ultrasound sensor in silicon photonics.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textOn this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich review the recent Applied Power Electronics Conference, or APEC, as a proxy for how the industry works post-pandemic and the reality of supply chain demand.Then, Scot Morrison, Vice President and General Manager of Siemens Digital Industries Software, formerly Mentor Embedded Software, shines a light on the future of embedded operating systems and how the industry will balance features, flexibility, and openness moving forward.Later, Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark analyzes advances in genomic sequencing being driven by advances in data analysis, and where that leaves us on the road to precision medicine.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textOn this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the electronics industry. Rapidly rising gas prices are fueling interest in electric vehicles but also highlighting supply chain issues and semiconductor shortages that can’t be overcome in a snap. They also consider how the conflict is affecting engineering resources in Eastern Europe and what that could mean for developers worldwide.Next, Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, joins to discuss how Intel, more specifically its foundry division, recently doubled down on its commitment to the open-source ISA. She goes on to explain open-source tools initiatives they’re establishing for the RISC-V community and how developers will benefit.For more information about RISC-V International, visit: riscv.org.Finally, assistant editor Taryn Engmark journeys north into the world of polar bears. As climate change threatens these animals’ natural habitats, the World Wildlife Fund needed t

Send us a textOn this episode, Brandon and Rich review highlights from Smart Manufacturing Day, including a debate on what Industry 5.0 truly means, and discuss the potential peril of code-heavy software-defined factories and vehicles.Next, Associate Editor Tiera Oliver is joined by BlackBerry Technology Solutions CTO Adam Boulton, who reveals all the different types of software automotive OEMs and suppliers believe are in modern vehicles and all the different types of software that actually are in their vehicles. Hint: The two lists are not the same. To reconcile this, BlackBerry is leading the emerging field of software composition analysis (SCA).For more information on the BlackBerry Jarvis software composition analysis tool, visit blackberry.qnx.com/en/products/security/blackberry-jarvisFinally, Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark discusses the plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, and two companies’ efforts to combat it. Tune in to learn how a Microsoft initiative to become carbon neutral by 2030 became a

Send us a textThe NVIDIA/Arm transaction may have fallen through, but that isn’t the only momentous merger and acquisition that’s been on the table in the embedded technology space. Xilinx is now officially part of AMD, and Wind River has been purchased by Aptiv from venture capital firm TPG. Will these deals turn out better than some of their predecessors? Only time will tell, but the Insiders’ have some predictions.After, Mike Henry, founder and CEO of Mythic AI, joins Brandon and Rich to discuss the new dawn of analog computing. From searching for any government funding they could to destroying the competition in executing the original AlexNet imaging convolutional neural network (CNN), Mike explains how his company got to the forefront of a technology that offers a much-needed path forward for computing – and how they’re integrating digital technologies that today’s engineers understand.To learn more about Mythic’s approach to analog computing, visit mythic-ai.com.Finally, Brandon continues his investigat

Send us a textOn this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich ponder the possible reasons NVIDIA’s acquisition of Arm is on the brink of collapse. After considering how difficult the IP company is to move to other semiconductor giants, they recall how Venkat Matella, former CEO and founder of Redpine Signals, was able to move some of his IP to Silicon Labs. But the operative word there is some, as he’s using what remains to launch a new launch a new low-energy supercomputing chip startup. For more on Matella’s latest venture, Ceremorphic, Inc., visit ceremorphic.com.Then, Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy at Spirent, talks to Associate Editor Tiera Oliver about the 5G trends we can expect to impact the embedded edge in 2022. It’s not about how connected you are, it’s about how connected you (and your devices) are gonna be with tech from 3GPP Release 17, Release 18, and beyond. For more information on the global 5G rollout, check out Spirent’s 2021 5G Report at spirent.com/assets/the-spirent-2021-5

Send us a textThis week, the Insiders recap a COVID-era Consumer Electronics Show and debate one of CES’s hottest topics: the metaverse. Broadly speaking, the metaverse could be an in-between where physical reality and virtual reality collide, or it could be an entirely digital alternate universe. Of course, the definition is open for interpretation because the metaverse is still very conceptual — so what does the metaverse mean to you?Next, Dunstan Power, Director at ByteSnap Design, discusses the role just-in-time manufacturing played in the global semiconductor shortage and whether, when the world emerges on the other side of it, manufacturers will fall back into old habits.Finally, ECD Associate Editor Tiera Oliver dives even deeper into the shortage, and one solution that’s underway to help solve it — a joint data-sharing ecosystem created by Palantir and Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany known as Athinia.For more information about ByteSnap Design, visit: www.bytesnap.comFor more information, visit embedded

Send us a textOn this episode, the Insiders debate whether AI is an application or a tool. Then Arvind Rao, Global Director and Head of Product Management and Industry Solutions at Rockwell Automation joins Brandon and Rich to discuss how the automation equipment supplier and its customers are faring with smart technology rollouts in the manufacturing sector. The three discuss the most successful starting points, potential roadblocks, and ways that internal and external Rockwell customers have successfully implemented Industrial IoT technology in new and legacy installations.Later, Associate Editor Tiera Oliver asks a philosophical question: Can an AI create? There is significant litigation around patents filed on behalf of an AI called DABUS as technologists, researchers, and courts worldwide dispute whether patents should be awarded entities other than natural persons. Tiera takes a deep dive into how this debate is unfolding in South Africa, where a legal team from the University of Surrey has brought the

Send us a textIn this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon returns from the RISC-V Summit with some fresh takes. Champions of the open-standard ISA expect it to start displacing competitive offerings en masse over the next few years. While that remains to be seen, the introduction of custom RISC-V instruction extensions, the formation industry-specific working groups, and advances in tools are redefining the technology’s true winners.Later, Brandon and Rich interview David Harold, CMO at Imagination Technologies, who explains how private equity investment saved the GPU leader from potential disaster. After consecutive years of multiple double-digit gains on the back of their A-Series IP, the company is now looking to expand back into the CPU space with a new line of RISC-V-based processor IP. But how will the Arm/NVIDIA situation impact their plans?Finally, Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark gives us an update on the electronic component shortage, where the news isn’t good. Research now estimates that supply lev

Send us a textOn this episode, the Insiders discuss safety-critical open source operating systems. Do the rigid requirements of safety-critical embedded applications force users to reduce the flexibility many believe is the biggest advantage of open source? And if so, why not just license a commercial offering?Next, Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation, provides her take on the evolution of embedded operating systems, from RTOSs to Linux. And what does that mean for systems engineering today?Finally, Embedded Computing Design’s Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark, gives us the rundown on BrakTooth, a group of security vulnerabilities in more than 1,400 Bluetooth-enabled devices, and what you can do about them.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textOn this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss recent findings that show 96% of manufacturing and automation companies who responded successfully to the COVID-19 pandemic had Industry 4.0 technology in place. But how? Then, Colin O’Flynn, CTO of open-source security tooling company NewAE Technology joins to explain the growing risk of side channel attacks to IoT devices. But the side channels themselves may not be the biggest challenge. It might be convincing engineers that they should care, then teaching them how to look for not-so-obvious vulnerabilities.Finally, Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark wanders into the abstract world of 6G edge networking where wireless connectivity technologies abound. How will we support all of the different options on a unified infrastructure? ETSI is working on a solution – Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces.You can access the McKinsey & Company Report, “COVID-19: An inflection point for Industry 4.0” online at https://bit.ly/Industry40_COV

Send us a textOn this episode the Insiders track the return of analog computing.  Mythic is a company looking to revolutionize AI computing through an  innovative matrix processor that processes analog signals in on-chip  memory before outputting them to the digital domain. Where does this tech fit today?Later, Rich interviews Abhishek Gupta, Director of Product  Management at KeepTruckin and Senya Pertsel, Senior Director of  Automotive Marketing at Ambarella, about an in-cabin, AI-powered  dash cam that keeps an eye on road conditions and driver behavior.  The depth of partnership on these systems runs a lot deeper than  you’d think. Finally, Embedded Computing Design assistant editor Chad Cox  considers life in a post-quantum world, and examines how an emerging technology – quantum tunneling – can be used to protect against  attacks on IoT devices.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textOn this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the push/pull of industry hardware standards, as support for PCI Express Gen 4 on the latest generation of Intel chipsets has created an inflection point for board- and system-level specifications that serve both legacy and emerging applications.Next, the Insiders are joined by Mark Doran, President of the UEFI Forum, to discuss release 2.9 of the firmware/OS interface specification. Now that electronic systems of all types support different and advanced memory configurations, will the role of abstraction layers like UEFI become less abstract?Then, a trio of engineers from the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, or DESY, research center in Hamburg, Germany, wonder how they can balance the demand for performance at some of the most advanced particle accelerators in the world with the need for standards-based computing platforms that protect these sophisticated, publicly-funded systems from the cost and availability risks of single-s

Send us a textOn this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the global chip shortage and the difference between price gouging, tough luck, and a need for innovation. Then Rich sits down with Russell Klein, Program Director for Siemens EDA, who will be keynoting at Embedded Computing Design’s virtual AI Day on September 9th. We all know we need AI at the edge, but can that edge be battery powered? Later, Tiera Oliver dives deeper into the chip shortage to discover just what makes semiconductor manufacturing so complex and time consuming. After learning the answer to that question – Atomic-Level Deposition – she touches base with researchers at Argonne National Laboratories who are leveraging open-source AI to accelerate the process.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textIn this week’s Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich try to decide if data sheets specs are reliable, or if industry benchmarks are the only reasonably- accurate measure of component performance without actually testing them yourself. Later, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discusses how the company’s pending acquisition of Arm is progressing, and what benefits the combined company will bring to each other and the market as a whole if the deal passes regulatory checks. Jensen also weighs in on the semiconductor shortage and how his company plans to keep pricing in check amidst supply and demand volatility. Finally, Tiera Oliver investigates the world of voice processing at the edge, where companies are adding more AI but not necessarily more processing. Engineers from Knowles Intelligent Audio and Cadence Design Systems weigh in on how classical DSP is being used to make your smart virtual assistant as clever as possible at battery-scale power consumption. And, to bring things full circle, Tiera introduces

Send us a textIn this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich wonder if residential solar power is really worth it. The question stems from Littelfuses’ release of 400PV Fuse series of photovoltaic solar fuses, which can be embedded directly into roof shingles or tiles. But with so much government meddling in the solar industry, and big energy looking to protect its existing interests, is it prudent, or even worth it, to bother with the technology? Later, the last leg of our ADLINK Technology edge AI series sees Zane Tsai, Director of the company’s Platform Product Center, join Rich to discuss why the massive amounts of data being collected by intelligent systems requires an entire ecosystem. Looking forward, this edge AI ecosystem will also include 5G.Finally, despite all of the downs in 2020, Xilinx was actually up. Victor Peng, the company’s CEO, attributes some of this success to big wins in AI sockets. But beyond innovations in their Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform (ACAP) portfolio, he

Send us a textIn this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss Silicon Laboratories recent divestiture of its infrastructure and automotive business units to SkyWorks Solutions. The sale includes the company’s power, isolation, broadcast, timing, and other products and IP. Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle said several years ago that the company is “all-in” on IoT, and this move appears to be him keeping his word. But was it the best move?Afterwards, Rich is rejoined by Zane Tsai, Director of the Platform Product Center at ADLINK, and Amit Goel, Director of Product Management for Embedded AI Platforms at NVIDIA. After discussing enabling technologies in previous episodes, the three get down to how this functionality can be applied to autonomous mobile robots. The market opportunity for AMRs is vast, but so are the challenges. The three dive into a collaboration between ADLINK, NVIDIA, and BMW to increase productivity, improve efficiency, and reduce cost in the German automakers manufacturing fac