Embedded Insiders

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On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich ponder the possible reasons NVIDIA’s acquisition of Arm is on the brink of collapse. After considering how difficult the IP company is to move to other semiconductor giants, they recall how Venkat Matella, former CEO and founder of Redpine Signals, was able to move some of his IP to Silicon Labs. But the operative word there is some, as he’s using what remains to launch a new launch a new low-energy supercomputing chip startup.
 
For more on Matella’s latest venture, Ceremorphic, Inc., visit ceremorphic.com.

Then, Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy at Spirent, talks to Associate Editor Tiera Oliver about the 5G trends we can expect to impact the embedded edge in 2022. It’s not about how connected you are, it’s about how connected you (and your devices) are gonna be with tech from 3GPP Release 17, Release 18, and beyond.

For more information on the global 5G rollout, check out Spirent’s 2021 5G Report at spirent.com/assets/the-spirent-2021-5g-report-mid-year-addendum.

Finally, have you ever tried to build a smart sensor? If you’re not steeped in writing sensor firmware, even if you have tried, you probably didn’t get very far. But if we can’t create smart sensors quickly and at scale, how will we ever realize the full potential of IoT? It’s standardization time, as Brandon reveals the latest specification from the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturer’s Group, or PICMG, which is designed to make smart sensor configuration so simple even a product manager could do it.

For more on PICMG IoT.1, including detailed explanations, code samples, diagrams, and more, read the series “Make Any Sensor a Smart Sensor with PICMG IoT.1” on the embeddedcomputing.com website or find a full-picture description of PICMG’s Industrial IoT initiatives at picmg.org/industrial-iot-overview.

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This week, the Insiders recap a COVID-era Consumer Electronics Show and debate one of CES’s hottest topics: the metaverse. Broadly speaking, the metaverse could be an in-between where physical reality and virtual reality collide, or it could be an entirely digital alternate universe. Of course, the definition is open for interpretation because the metaverse is still very conceptual — so what does the metaverse mean to you?

Next, Dunstan Power, Director at ByteSnap Design, discusses the role just-in-time manufacturing played in the global semiconductor shortage and whether, when the world emerges on the other side of it, manufacturers will fall back into old habits.

Finally, ECD Associate Editor Tiera Oliver dives even deeper into the shortage, and one solution that’s underway to help solve it — a joint data-sharing ecosystem created by Palantir and Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany known as Athinia.

For more information about ByteSnap Design, visit: www.bytesnap.com

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On this episode, the Insiders debate whether AI is an application or a tool. Then Arvind Rao, Global Director and Head of Product Management and Industry Solutions at Rockwell Automation joins Brandon and Rich to discuss how the automation equipment supplier and its customers are faring with smart technology rollouts in the manufacturing sector. The three discuss the most successful starting points, potential roadblocks, and ways that internal and external Rockwell customers have successfully implemented Industrial IoT technology in new and legacy installations.

Later, Associate Editor Tiera Oliver asks a philosophical question: Can an AI create? There is significant litigation around patents filed on behalf of an AI called DABUS as technologists, researchers, and courts worldwide dispute whether patents should be awarded entities other than natural persons. Tiera takes a deep dive into how this debate is unfolding in South Africa, where a legal team from the University of Surrey has brought the case in front of the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission.

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In this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon returns from the RISC-V Summit with some fresh takes. Champions of the open-standard ISA expect it to start displacing competitive offerings en masse over the next few years. While that remains to be seen, the introduction of custom RISC-V instruction extensions, the formation industry-specific working groups, and advances in tools are redefining the technology’s true winners.

Later, Brandon and Rich interview David Harold, CMO at Imagination Technologies, who explains how private equity investment saved the GPU leader from potential disaster. After consecutive years of multiple double-digit gains on the back of their A-Series IP, the company is now looking to expand back into the CPU space with a new line of RISC-V-based processor IP. But how will the Arm/NVIDIA situation impact their plans?

Finally, Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark gives us an update on the electronic component shortage, where the news isn’t good. Research now estimates that supply levels will remain unstable through the first half of 2023, meaning that it may be time for many engineering organizations to “BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY” when it comes to part sourcing.

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On this episode, the Insiders discuss safety-critical open source operating systems. Do the rigid requirements of safety-critical embedded applications force users to reduce the flexibility many believe is the biggest advantage of open source? And if so, why not just license a commercial offering?

Next, Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation, provides her take on the evolution of embedded operating systems, from RTOSs to Linux. And what does that mean for systems engineering today?

Finally, Embedded Computing Design’s Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark, gives us the rundown on BrakTooth, a group of security vulnerabilities in more than 1,400 Bluetooth-enabled devices, and what you can do about them.

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On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss recent findings that show 96% of manufacturing and automation companies who responded successfully to the COVID-19 pandemic had Industry 4.0 technology in place. But how? 

Then, Colin O’Flynn, CTO of open-source security tooling company NewAE Technology joins to explain the growing risk of side channel attacks to IoT devices. But the side channels themselves may not be the biggest challenge. It might be convincing engineers that they should care, then teaching them how to look for not-so-obvious vulnerabilities.

Finally, Assistant Editor Taryn Engmark wanders into the abstract world of 6G edge networking where wireless connectivity technologies abound. How will we support all of the different options on a unified infrastructure? ETSI is working on a solution – Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces.

You can access the McKinsey & Company Report, “COVID-19: An inflection point for Industry 4.0” online at https://bit.ly/Industry40_COVID19.

For more on ChipWhisperer and low-leverage ways of securing your IoT and embedded devices, visit newae.com.

[Editor’s Note: ETSI members and non-ETSI members interested in learning more about reconfigurable intelligent surfaces and ways to can participate can visit the ISG webpage at https://portal.etsi.org/TB-SiteMap/RIS/List-of-ISG-RIS-Members-and-Participants]

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On this episode the Insiders track the return of analog computing.  Mythic is a company looking to revolutionize AI computing through an  innovative matrix processor that processes analog signals in on-chip  memory before outputting them to the digital domain. Where does this tech fit today?

Later, Rich interviews Abhishek Gupta, Director of Product  Management at KeepTruckin and Senya Pertsel, Senior Director of  Automotive Marketing at Ambarella, about an in-cabin, AI-powered  dash cam that keeps an eye on road conditions and driver behavior.  The depth of partnership on these systems runs a lot deeper than  you’d think.

Finally, Embedded Computing Design assistant editor Chad Cox  considers life in a post-quantum world, and examines how an emerging technology – quantum tunneling – can be used to protect against  attacks on IoT devices.

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On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the push/pull of industry hardware standards, as support for PCI Express Gen 4 on the latest generation of Intel chipsets has created an inflection point for board- and system-level specifications that serve both legacy and emerging applications.

Next, the Insiders are joined by Mark Doran, President of the UEFI Forum, to discuss release 2.9 of the firmware/OS interface specification. Now that electronic systems of all types support different and advanced memory configurations, will the role of abstraction layers like UEFI become less abstract?

Then, a trio of engineers from the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, or DESY, research center in Hamburg, Germany, wonder how they can balance the demand for performance at some of the most advanced particle accelerators in the world with the need for standards-based computing platforms that protect these sophisticated, publicly-funded systems from the cost and availability risks of single-source designs. Assistant Editor Chad Cox reports.

Tune in.

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On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss the global chip shortage and the difference between price gouging, tough luck, and a need for innovation. 

Then Rich sits down with Russell Klein, Program Director for Siemens EDA, who will be keynoting at Embedded Computing Design’s virtual AI Day on September 9th. We all know we need AI at the edge, but can that edge be battery powered? 

Later, Tiera Oliver dives deeper into the chip shortage to discover just what makes semiconductor manufacturing so complex and time consuming. After learning the answer to that question – Atomic-Level Deposition – she touches base with researchers at Argonne National Laboratories who are leveraging open-source AI to accelerate the process.

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In this week’s Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich try to decide if data sheets specs are reliable, or if industry benchmarks are the only reasonably- accurate measure of component performance without actually testing them yourself. 

Later, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discusses how the company’s pending acquisition of Arm is progressing, and what benefits the combined company will bring to each other and the market as a whole if the deal passes regulatory checks. Jensen also weighs in on the semiconductor shortage and how his company plans to keep pricing in check amidst supply and demand volatility. 

Finally, Tiera Oliver investigates the world of voice processing at the edge, where companies are adding more AI but not necessarily more processing. Engineers from Knowles Intelligent Audio and Cadence Design Systems weigh in on how classical DSP is being used to make your smart virtual assistant as clever as possible at battery-scale power consumption. And, to bring things full circle, Tiera introduces MLPerf Tiny Inferencing benchmark that can help voice recognition designers determine how fast, accurate, and low power their edge AI stacks can be before building out complete systems.  

Stay tuned.

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