ISI, or Interconnect Systems International, was acquired by Molex in the recent past. The company is in the manufacturing space, particularly in terms of packaging, at both the chip and board levels. That puts the company in an interesting position when it comes to the chip shortage, as the company’s engineers have the ability to help customers redesign the boards to accommodate for different parts to replace those that simply are not available. To that end, I spoke with Tom Casey, a Vice president at ISI to hear how that’s working out. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to hear Tom’s thoughts.

If you could operate WiFi at the power levels typically associated with Bluetooth, do you really need Bluetooth anymore? I would think not, because WiFi offers so much more functionality, particularly the longer range. However, as this is usually the case, the answer is, “not so fast.” I asked that question (and many more) of Rob McCormick, a Director at InnoPhase, a company that specializes in low-power WiFi. He set me straight—for now. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to hear why.

Testing for physical interfaces, especially in the automotive space, can be quite challenging. It’s a harsh environment for starters, but there are other issues to contend with as well. I went through those issues, and how to deal with them with Mike Schnecker, a Business Development Manager for Rohde & Schwarz in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

In theory, developers should be writing their code well before the hardware is available. In practice, that’s not usually the case, for a host of reasons. CacheQ Systems has come up with a method that greatly simplifies this process, and really does allow developers to get down to business without the ready hardware. How do they do that? That’s what you’ll learn in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with Clay Johnson, CacheQ Systems’ CEO) and Co-Founder.

Are you familiar with “analog machine learning?” If the answer is yes, then you’re likely in the minority. I find myself in the other group. Hence, in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I spoke to Tom Doyle, Aspinity’s Founder and CEO. Aspinity specializes in that technology and Tom explained what it is, how it works, and why I should care.

The global chip shortage continues to rage on, and it appears to be worsening rather than getting better. Different people have different reasons for why we are in this predicament, and Johnson Chen, an Executive at Winbond, is no different. Johnson brings a little different perspective, as he spends his time in Taiwan, and is focused on some specific applications, like automotive. Check out what he had to say in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

The Nexar platform, which is based on a Cloud architecture, allows designers the ability to collaborate in their PCB designs. It works with Altium’s 365 tool to enable a collaborative design process (In full disclosure, Nexar is a division of Altium). With lots of ecosystems partners coming into the fray, the designer has lots of choices when designing a PCB that’s just right for their application. I got all of this information and more from Ted Pawela, the Chief Ecosystem Officer at Altium and the Head of Nexar, in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

We are in a serious chip shortage. Why is that the case? Well, it depends who you ask. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I asked Peggy Carrieres, who is the Global Vice President of Sales Enablement for Avnet. For better or worse, Avnet sits right in the middle of the shortage, and they make their business selling chips. Peggy explains why, but also gives some insight into what an engineer should do, both in the short term and the long term.

AI Day is right around the corner (on September 9). One of the sessions will cover how you actually build an AI platform. And to put our money where our mouth is, 16 lucky registrants will be selected randomly to receive a Topaz i7 platform from Simply NUC. In the session titled Hands-On Experience to Building Your First AI Solution Within an Hour, led by Raymond Lo, you will learn how to get an AI inference running lickety split using OpenVINO. Get more insight directly from Raymond in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

John Deere is obviously a leader in the agriculture space. Most of us know the company for its tractors, and products that are related to farming, etc. However, it’s come to my attention that AI is now front and center in many of the company’s products, particularly for “precision farming.” I found this surprising and interesting. How and why that’s happening is where I started with Zach Bonefas, an Automation Technology Leader at John Deere in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.