Embedded Executive Podcast

My definition of Industry 5.0 has to do with putting people and robots into the same environment, and having them work and operate together, safely and securely. How we get to that point is still a matter of contention. For a better understanding of what it means and how we get there, I talked to Sameer Wasson, the Vice President and Business Unit Manager for Texas Instruments’ processor business in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Standards abound in the world of the IoT. There are standards organizations, some ad-hoc, some with some real muscle behind them. That is certainly the case when it comes to security for the IoT. But what if you’re designing to “open standards?” That’s something that crossed my desk recently, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure what it meant, so I decided to go to the source of that phrase, Marcin Nagy, the Product Director for IoT at AVSystem. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I had Marcin explain what is meant by open standards, and then how it effects the embedded design community.

Higher voltages and higher frequencies are becoming commonplace in embedded designs. That in itself doesn’t necessarily cause an issue. But when you add in that packages continue to shrink in size, you have the potential for detrimental heat and airflow issues. How do you deal with that? That’s where the discussion started with Dr. Phil Lessner, the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, at KEMET. He had lots of advice for system designers in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Cellular IoT is one way of connecting our devices. But is it the best way? I could make a really good argument why it’s not, and I actually tried to do that in my discussion with Dima Feldman, the Vice President of Product Management at Altair Semiconductor, now a Sony Group Company. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast., Dima explained how it works and where it makes the most sense.

There are a lot of adjectives that you can use to describe a smart home: cool, useful, efficient, safe, etc. However, you also have to add “complex” to your list, because getting these smart devices to work and (gulp) interoperate, well that’s a different story. That’s where Connected Home over IP Alliance (CHIP) comes into play. In theory—and I’m told in practice as well—if any device is CHIP compliant, you simply plug it in and it works.

If you look at the list of collaborators, you have to believe that this standard will stick. It includes Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance. To describe what the standard is and how it works, I spoke to Steve Hanna, a multi-hatted engineer. Steve is a Senior Principal at Infineon Technologies, Co-Chair of the Embedded Systems Work Group in the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), and he is my guest on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Did you know there were standards established for wireless charging? In fact, they’re up to Rev. 2.0 of the standard. This was news to me. Stephen Rizzone, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Energous Corp. joined me to fill in the gaps, which in my case, were fairly wide. With the new spec, the distance the device can be from the charger is now measured in feet. Hear more in to this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Yay! Another wireless standard. That’s just what we need, because the landscape isn’t already crowded enough. Do I sound cynical? Maybe. It depends on your perspective. WiFi HaLow is a WiFi-like standard that comes with its own set of benefits. I’ll let you decide whether there’s a place for another wireless standard after you listen to this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with Vahid Manian, Chief Operating Officer of Morse Micro.

The company formerly known as National Instruments is known simply as NI. Is that a big deal? Maybe, depending on who you ask. So I asked Carla Piñeyro Sublett, NI’s Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager of the company’s Portfolio Business. As expected, there’s far more to it than a simple name change. Tune in to this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to learn what it actually means.

We love our crystal balls, especially as we get into the later part of the year. I can make all the predictions I want, but my job doesn’t typically depend on whether my predictions are accurate. That’s not the case with product management folks, such as Ellen Boehm, who is the Senior Director of IoT Product Management for Keyfactor. Ellen has to determine what markets are going to be hot and why when it comes to IoT. I ask her to share of those details on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

I think it’s awesome when some of the bigger vendors in our space help fund start-ups. One example of that is Maxim Ventures, an arm of Maxim Integrated. The investment group is funding a bunch of startups in the medical space. You go into these things knowing that some of your investments are going to pay off and some aren’t. But if you pick a big-time winner, it can pay off in spades. Maxim Ventures has already seen some level of success, as Chris Neil, a Senior Vice President of Maxim Ventures, explains in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.