Embedded Executive Podcast

Here we go again; 8-bit MCUs are not dead yet. I said a few years ago that I’d give this argument up, and simply wait for the official announcement, but apparently, I shouldn’t hold my breath. Who better to know if 8-bit MCUs are shipping in big (really big) volumes, but Microchip. Hence, I had a conversation with Steve Kennelly, Microchip’s Associate Director of its Medical Products Group. He was this week’s guest on our Embedded Executives podcast.

Enovix is a battery company that designs, manufactures, and sells batteries with a three-dimensional cell architecture that increases energy density and maintains high cycle life. The targets for these cells could be any type of mobile device.

Ashok Lahiri, Enovix’s Advisor and Co-Founder, gave me great information on why the technology works so well and where it can be used most appropriately. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to learn more.

Far-field voice is something that’s hard to decipher, mostly because it’s far. I know that’s overly simplistic, but it’s true. For a much better explanation of this and a detailed description on how it works, I spoke to Scott McNeese, the Director of Voice and Audio for ArkX Labs, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. The company specializes in voice technology for consumer devices.

Infineon has partnered with a bunch of folks to simplify the lives of system developers, specifically those who want to integrate Bluetooth. Those partners include module vendors and software providers. To understand what this means, I spoke to Sivaram Trikutam, the Vice President of Infineon’s Wi-Fi product line on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

The LoRa Alliance is an open, nonprofit association that represents the LoRaWAN standard. LoRa is growing quickly and expanding into a host of both new geographies and new applications. To see where its headed and why it’s been so successful, I spoke to the Alliance’s Chairwoman, Donna Moore, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

As a sidenote, the LoRa Alliance will be holding its first live event of 2023, LoRaWAN Live, in a couple of weeks in Orlando. 

And you may want to check out the End of Year Report that Donna references in the podcast.

Five years ago, the experts said that autonomous-drive vehicles were five years out. Now, five years later, they still appear to be five years out? Why is that? To try to get to the bottom of the issue, I spoke to someone who knows far more about the technology than me, Stan Schneider, the CEO of RTI on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a hot technology. The topic/technology seems to be coming up more and more. I was curious as to why that was the case, so I spoke to someone who is an expert on the subject for this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. That expert is Simon Keeton, the EVP and GM of onsemi’s Power Solutions Group.

Intel recently launched a new addition to its Sapphire Rapids scalable processor family. The addition delivers a performance boost, but as you might expect, it’s a whole lot more involved than that. To understand what the announcement means to the embedded developer, I chatted with Vik Malyala,  Managing Director and President of the EMEA Division at Supermicro. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, Vik explains how these changes, mostly positive, affect both the hardware and software designs of the system.

If you’ve been in the embedded space for any length of time, you’re likely familiar with the ThreadX real-time operating system, which was a product of Express Logic. That company was acquired by Microsoft, and it’s President, Bill Lamie, went along with the team to Microsoft…until now. Bill is back out on this own, with a new company (PX5) and a new OS, called the PX5 RTOS. How this OS differs from the competition and how a new start-up company can dislodge some of the large competitors was topic du jour in my discussion with Bill in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.