Embedded Insiders

Send us a textThe holidays are over, we’ve rung in the New Year, so it must be time for CES, ready or not. The Embedded Insiders (Rich Nass and Brandon Lewis) are definitely ready for the exciting Consumer Electronics Show, which seems to get crazier every year. Maps are downloaded, plans are made, sneakers are purchased. In this edition of our podcast, we give you a glimpse of where our travels throughout CES will take us.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textAs the calendar flips to 2019, embedded processor companies continue to ramp up their AI and machine learning offerings. Two leading processor vendors are doubling down on different architectures to capture these sockets, with Intel betting on Movidius vision processors and (formerly Altera's) FPGA technology and NVIDIA continuing to deliver GPU-based solutions. Tune in as the Embedded Insiders recap recent announcements from the two giants, and look ahead at what to expect from AI processors in the future.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textThe RISC-V Foundation held its Silicon Valley Summit last week. From sheer numbers alone, the open-source instruction-set architecture (ISA) known as RISC-V is gaining momentum in a pretty big way. And the announcements from the event were aplenty. Two big ones, from Western Digital (WD) and NXP (sort of, through the Open-ISA.org) prove that it’s all about the ecosystem and both vendors are doing their part to make that ecosystem grow into something sustainable. Listen to this week’s Embedded Insiders podcast to hear about these announcements and a few others. But more importantly, hear what these announcements really mean.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textAsset tracking has become an industry on its own thanks to so many new and inexpensive technologies. Whether it’s food, meds, or other valuables, there’s no reason not to know exactly where your shipment is at any given time. In addition, you could know the condition of that asset at any given time. To hear what the options are today, I spoke to Dr. Elaine Rideout, Founder and CEO of Wiser Systems in this week’s Five Minutes with…discussionFor more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textThe RISC-V ISA has the potential to be a dominant player in the embedded, IoT, and industrial spaces, just to name a few. But before any architecture can take off, it needs a solid ecosystem behind it. The Open-ISA.org initiative, launched today, is taking steps to ensure that that ecosystem starts and stays on the correct path. In this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion, I speak to Rob Oshana, VP of Software and R&D at NXP. Rob is fresh off his keynote at the RISC-V Summit, where he made some important announcements regarding that ecosystem.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textCloud connectivity is pretty straightforward. You contact AMS or Microsoft, or another provider. You download their tools, and you’re done. Well, maybe it’s not so simple, and that’s where the middleware provider comes in to play. Or do they, as the role of middleware can be a confusing one. To better understand where all the pieces fit, I spoke to Hugo Fiennes, CEO of Electric Imp, who happens to be a middleware provider. That’s the basis of this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textRumors of a shortage of electronics engineers have been circulating for years, but with Fortune 500 technology firms now gobbling up as much engineering talent as possible for IT and enterprise software development, the rumors are as pointed as ever. Dave Hughes, Founder and CEO of software and system engineering firm HCC Embedded, joins the Embedded Insiders to discuss his first-hand experience dealing with the electronics engineering workforce. According to Hughes, the issues go deeper than what young developers are choosing to pursue.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textWhen we discuss AI, the discussion typically revolves around processing or algorithms. But I was reminded recently that power plays a big part in AI. How is that, you ask? Well, check out this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion with Ian Mazsa, a Director of Product Management and Business Development at Vicor to understand why you need to be concerned about power if you’re designing for AI.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textThe reason you should care about MISRA C is a simple one. It stops you from doing things that the C language allows you to do that you really don’t want to do. Well, maybe not so simple. But that’s the way that Andrew Banks explained it to me in this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion. Andrew is the Chairman of the MISRA C Working Group and also a Technical Specialist with LDRA. There are some anomalies within C that even savvy developers may not be aware of. Conforming to the spec will make all your troubles go away…at least your development troubles.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textSmart homes are built with lots of sensors. The more sensors you’ve got, the smarter your home (sort of). But you still have to make a fair amount of choices, including which radio you employ and how it is deployed. One of the better ways to do it is in a SiP, at least according to Cees Links, general manager of Qorvo’s Wireless Connectivity Business Unit, who was my guest on this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion. He’ll explain why the SiP is a good way to go, along with lots of other things that have to do with the smart home, including why you don’t need a mesh network.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textWork on artificial intelligence (AI) is taking place in all corners of the globe. In fact, a recent event was held in China to further the advancement of AI as it relates to heterogeneous computing. Who better to discuss this topic than John Glossner, President of the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HAS) Foundation in this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion. If you want to know what’s going on over there or who is leading the race, I suggest you tune in.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textMachine learning (ML) is something that really needs to occur at the Edge of the IoT. That sounds great, except that it’s quite difficult to achieve. In this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion with Ed Kuzemchak, CTO and Director of IoT for Software Design Solutions, we discussed what’s required to make ML at the Edge a reality.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textNeural nets and simulators. This is not a combination that I would have put together, but after it was explained to me, putting them together makes a lot of sense. If you don’t get the connection, check out this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion with Peter McGuinness, CEO of Highwai, an expert in simulation for autonomous vehicles.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textNew computer architectures come along all the time. Some stand the test of time while others get EOLed (end of lifed) pretty quickly. Why is that? Is it for technical reasons, marketing reasons, or something else? This is the topic that the Embedded Insiders tackled this week. And to give it a perspective, we asked Jonathon Miller, CEO of Diamond Systems, to join us. Diamond Systems offers products that take advantage of new architectures and old, so we figured Jonathan would have some answers to our questions (and he did).For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textUSB-PD is a newer specification that deals with the power that can be derived from a USB port. It’s quite an important spec and one that has lots of potential. Unfortunately, it’s one of the specs that’s not well understood. To get a better understanding for myself (in turn, for you), I invited Doug Bailey, a vice president at Power Integrations to be my guest for this week’s Five Minutes with…podcast.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textThe Industrial IoT industry is full of promise. But wait, haven’t we said that before? At some point, it has to bear fruit, and we seem to be pushing out the “hockey stick” yet again to next year. What is the reason for that? That’s what I asked Bruce Chatterley, Senet’s President and CEO in this week’s Five Minutes with…podcast. His response made as much sense as anything I’ve heard before.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a text5G is the wireless standard that’s poised to revolutionize how we interact with data. And it’s only a year away from being a reality. Or is it? Isn’t that what we were told last year, and the year before that? In this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion, I spoke to James Kimery, the Director of Wireless Research at National Instruments to understand when exactly we’d be seeing 5G.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textApple took center stage this week as it announced a series of new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. Is that exciting technology? It probably is to some, but not to the Embedded Insiders. So that begs the question, who are the real innovators in the embedded space? That’s the question the Embedded Insiders tackled this week. Give it a listen and see if you agree.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textMachine learning is a hot topic these days, and the biggest potential impact is in the industrial space. At the same time, the initial outlay for the technology could turn some vendors away. So the question is, at what cost does it make sense? That’s one of many questions I fired at Nikunj Mehta, who is the Founder and CEO of Falkonry in this week’s Five Minutes with…discussion.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com

Send us a textThere’s a reasonably good chance that you’re not old enough to remember the days of analog computers, as that would likely put you in your sixties. Most of us grew up on digital computers, which are way smarter, smaller, and consume less power than the original analog systems. Ironically, analog computing may be making a comeback. And it’s ironic because one of the people leading the charge is Gene Frantz, who is well known as a visionary in the DSP space. Gene is currently the CTO of Octavo Systems. Hear what he has to say about this next chapter of computing.For more information, visit embeddedcomputing.com