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.

Is 5G more hype than reality? After all this time, I sure hope not. There are pockets where 5G is actually in use, but a real full-scale rollout is still quite a ways away, particularly in the embedded and industrial sectors. So, when and where will we finally see 5G? That’s the question I asked Mike Fahrion, the Chief Technology Officer of Multi-Tech Systems in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast... And as you’ll hear, I didn’t let him off the hook too easily.

The Eclipse Foundation recently conducted a survey that focuses on IoT and Edge solutions. When I saw the results, I thought some sort of explanation was required, and that’s exactly what I got from Frederic Desbiens, Program Manager for IoT & Edge at the Eclipse Foundation in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Firmware testing is often performed in a vacuum, aka a perfect environment in a lab. When taken out to the real world, the product may or may not perform as expected due to a variety of factors. To try and combat that, Memfault has designed a test platform that allows for testing in the field. And to get started, you can download the tool for free. To learn more about the pluses and minus of this technology, check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with François Baldassari, the CEO and Co-Founder of Memfault.

Security is one of the foremost topics in the embedded space today. In a recent conversation with Patrick Carrier, the Regional Manager for IoT and Cloud Security at Infineon Technologies, he had a different spin on security. Namely, there’s far more to it than whether you have or don’t have security built into your system. Not understanding what he meant by that, I thought it would be appropriate to have Patrick on as a guest on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.