Embedded Executive Podcast

Sub-threshold technology has pushed microprocessor power levels down to places we have not seen before.  While it’s not a new technology, but something that Ambiq has been implementing for many years, why haven’t other vendors implemented it, if it’s so promising? That’s the question I started with in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with my guest,  Ambiq’s Vice President of AI, Carlos Morales.

The discussion of SoC versus ASSP has been going on for as long as these devices have existed. The pendulum seems to shift over time, depending on which applications are hot at the moment (is there currently a killer app?), how much the manufacturing costs are, and a host of other factors. To understand where the discussion sits today, I spoke to Rajinder Cheema, the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Socionext America in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

We’ve been talking a lot lately about what it means to be “real time.” In theory, it’s not something that’s achievable. But in practice, “good enough” is good enough for many applications. Another product to hit the market recently is a real-time database, developed by McObject. When I saw that release, I jumped at the chance to speak to Steve Graves, McObject’s President and CEO, to see if his definition matched mine. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to hear Steve’s thoughts.

Since we’ve turned the page on a new year, it’s time to make some predictions. I asked Brandon Lewis, the Embedded Computing Design Editor-in-Chief, to join me and make some predictions for the new year. Some are likely expected and some might surprise you. Hear our thoughts in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Newark recently conducted a poll of Makers and Professional Makers, looking at their board choices, operating environments, architectures, and so on. The results from the study were pretty eye-opening. Hence why I had a discussion with Cliff Ortmeyer, Newark’s Global Head of Technology Product Marketing and Solutions Development. We talked about results of the poll, why the respondents chose to respond they way they did, and whether developers were making choices for the right reasons. Check out our discussion in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) continues to be a force to be reckoned with within our embedded space. And I mean that in a good way. Today, we are discussing the security of consumer devices, which falls under the Matter portion of the CSA. That security design is now complete and the open-source implementation is near-ready.According to Steve Hanna, a Distinguished Engineer at Infineon Technologies, Matter will be raising the security bar to where it needs to be. Obviously, security is a moving target, and the group will continue to evolve the standard.Our second guest, Chris LaPre, Director of Technology for the CSA, speaks from the Alliance’s perspective on what needs to happen to get a large number of influential contributors to agree on a standard that continually keeps the end user in mind. Hear all that and more in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

AI should be performed at the Edge whenever possible, according to Yasser Khan,  CEO and Co-Founder of MicroAI. But there seems to be just as many reasons to do it in the Cloud. This is where the back-and-forth began in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

There are many applications that require real-time interactions. Automotive certainly fits into that category. But the term “real time” is bothersome to me, as it’s not something that’s achievable. We can get “near real time,” but that’s about as good as it gets. But is that good enough? That’s the question I asked Heather Gorr,  Senior Product Marketing Manager for the MATLAB product at Mathworks, in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

EVs can be confusing from a “what voltage does it run at” perspective. We have the 12-V lead-acid batteries that have been around for decades. But there are many new sizes, types, chemistries, and voltages. According to Patrick Kowalyk, a North American Automotive Principal Field Applications Engineer for Vicor, the way in which we deliver power within the automobile needs to change. To hear exactly how, tune in to this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

When designing your embedded system, the storage subsystem is not always at the top of the priority list. Depending on your system, that may be okay. But if you’re designing for automotive applications, that’s one way to get yourself in hot water. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I talked to Robert Bielby, Micron’s Senior Director of Automotive System Architecture, to understand why the memory subsystem needs to move up the list, potentially way up.