Embedded Executive Podcast

What RTOS dominates the embedded space? Your first guess might be Linux, but you would be wrong, by a wide margin. FreeRTOS is the winner. If you’re wondering how and why FreeRTOS came to be, this is the podcast for you. Today i'm speaking with the RTOS’s original creator, Richard Barry. Richard is now part of Amazon Web Services (AWS), but he is still leading the charge for FreeRTOS. Hear how it came about, and where Richard thinks it’s going on this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Many applications today are “software-defined.” Until recently, I would not have used that term to describe an automobile, but I’ve since been set straight. In this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast I spoke to Jeff Chou, the CEO and founder of Sonatus, who gave me his definition of the software-defined automobile and explained why it’s far better to handle these functions in software versus hardware.

When you have a chance to chat with somebody who is a pioneer in the embedded space, you grab it. And that’s what happened this week when Rolf Segger, Founder of Segger Microcontroller, agreed to be my guest on this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.  Rolf is known for not pulling any punches and he was quite honest with me when we discussed what’s happening in the world of embedded. We talked about RTOSs and security amongst other topics.

Are you familiar with model-based systems engineering (MBSE)? I have to admit that I was not familiar with, but it looked like something I should know about. To educate myself, I had a discussion with Marco Leon, the Director of Systems Architecture Engineering at Mercury Systems, in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. As a relatively new technique, it's designed to reduce your design risk.

When it comes to embedded computers for industrial applications, size does matter—sometimes. Many of the industrial platforms cut a fairly wide berth, so you can take a lot of liberties with the embedded computer board. But for those applications where space is at a premium, systems integrators don’t have the same number of options. One option that’s now available is the Interceptor from BlackPearl Technology. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I spoke to Dave Smith, Co-Founder and VP of Innovation at Black Pearl, and we discussed when and where a platform like this one makes sense.

Processors to handle AI at the Edge are quite complex. However, that hasn’t stopped so many companies from producing their variants. In some cases, they come from the established MCU providers, and in other cases, they come from startups. Kinara fits that latter category. As we discussed in this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, it’s really hard to differentiate yourself. I asked the company’s CEO, Ravi Annavajjhala, what makes his company stand out amongst some pretty stiff competition.

I have done lots of these Embedded Executive podcasts, a few hundred in fact. This particular podcast goes in a direction I have never gone before, and involves the mafia (yes, you read that correctly). John Costello, who serves as the Corporate Vice President Government Affairs for Microchip Technology, has some stories to tell that involve members of his (literal) family, and their dealings on the dark side. John wrote a book called Executive Hoodlum that’s extremely interesting and we cover some of what he wrote about. Definitely check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

For starters, Smith is the largest electronics distributer that I have never heard of. They are a multi-billion-dollar company. One of the strengths of the company is ensuring that its products are real (as opposed to counterfeits). That’s harder than it sounds, but vital to a developer. As we know, fake parts likely don’t provide the same operating characteristics as real parts. To understand how Smith tackles this process, I spoke to the company’s CEO, Kirk Wehby in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Richard Lind is about seven months into his role as CEO of IAR Systems, one of the leaders in embedded development tools. One of his biggest competitors has a huge advantage—their tool is free! Or is it really? That’s the question I asked of Richard, and he had a very interesting response in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Texas Instruments is a big company. One thing that’s afforded by a company of its size is a lab that can help the various product groups on their designs. And that’s the role of Kilby Labs at TI. The group is good at assessing risk, understanding whether a product should follow through to full development, and so on. To explain it far better than that, I invited Dr. Jeffrey Morroni, the Director of Power Management R&D for Kilby Labs, at Texas Instruments on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.