Podcast Guests: 

Udson Mendes, Team leader in quantum technologies at CMC Microsystems in Sherbrooke QC.

Janne Lehtinen, chief scientific officer and co-founder of SemiQon Technologies in Finland.

In an agreement to advance silicon-based quantum processor technology, SemiQon has collaborated with CMC this spring. Under the terms of the deal, SemiQon will supply CMC with prototypes of its semiconductor-based quantum processor chips for research purposes. CMC scientists are collaborating with SemiQon to accelerate the development of processors for more powerful quantum computers suitable for the next generation of quantum computing.

Our podcast conversation touches on many facets of quantum computing in Canada and globally, including roadmaps, research, applications and more.

What is CMC Microsystems

CMC Microsystems is a not-for-profit organization that accelerates research and innovation in advanced technologies including microelectronics, photonics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and quantum software and hardware. Founded in 1984, CMC lowers the cost and complexity of technology adoption by creating and sharing platform technologies including access to state-of-the-art design, manufacturing and testing capabilities. CMC enables research, development, and the training of highly qualified personnel (HQP) for an international network of over 10,000 researchers and more than 1,200 companies developing innovations in advanced technologies.

What is SemiQon Technologies

A manufacturer of silicon-based quantum processors for the million-qubit era, the Finnish-based firm is on a mission to fully realize the promise of quantum computing by delivering scalability through powerful, resilient and cost-effective silicon-based quantum processors and close the gap between today’s reality and future possibilities. SemiQon is a spin-off from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and started operations in 2023 based on $1.9M Euro pre-seed funding.

In this podcast episode, Chris provides some insights to this Toronto-based artificial intelligence semiconductor start-up. The firm is currently developing a powerful new AI chip that eliminates the data movement bottleneck that costs energy and performance in traditional architectures. While elaborating on the real-world applications of Untether AI's technology, Chris explains how his firm’s energy-efficient chip design translates into tangible benefits for designers. He also touches on the role Untether plays in shaping the future of AI-driven electronic devices, and how he anticipates the industry evolving in the coming years.

Chris Walker is an innovative and growth-driven semiconductor executive, having led major initiatives and business units throughout his 30-year career at Intel Corp. His expertise extends across operations, finance, business development/M&A, product, and marketing leadership. Recently, he has been a senior advisor with Cerberus Capital, supporting investments in technology fund and management consulting.

What is Untether AI?

Untether AI, a Toronto-based semiconductor firm that specializes in developing high-performance AI processors for various applications, particularly focused on deep learning and neural network tasks.

These processors deliver exceptional performance while minimizing power consumption, making them suitable for deployment in edge computing devices, data centers and other AI-driven systems. Untether AI's technology often involves innovative approaches to parallel processing and memory management, enabling efficient execution of complex AI algorithms. Overall, the start-up firm aims to push the boundaries of AI hardware acceleration, facilitating faster and more energy-efficient computation for a wide range of applications.

Podcast Guest: Qaiser Habib, director of engineering and Toronto site lead at Snowflake.

In this podcast episode, Habib shares his thoughts on why Toronto is poised to be a central hub for data innovation, along with emerging application trends that Canadian businesses can expect to see. He also touches on how Canadian businesses can benefit from embracing the data economy.

From a software engineering perspective, Habib speaks about the role of engineering in Canada and how it will evolve over the next five years, as well as strategies to build and scale high-performing engineering teams. He adds depth to why engineers in such high demand and how Canadian companies can adopt ‘intentional hiring’ strategies to grow and scale high-performing engineering teams.

In the event that you may be curious about Snowflake, Habib talks about the firm’s engineering presence in Canada.

Qaiser Habib serves as the director of engineering and Toronto site lead at Snowflake. Habib is a veteran engineering leader and a well-recognized expert in the Canadian market, currently focused on building and leading the Canadian engineering presence for Snowflake.

Habib has recognized the city’s capabilities to drive data innovation — and informs me that the hub’s lead initiative includes a first-of-its-kind Native Application (Apps) Framework, empowering developers to build, monetize and deploy applications in the Data Cloud, which will enable a new breed of data-intensive apps and a Marketplace set to revolutionize software development as we know it. 

Prior to Snowflake, Habib created and led DoorDash's International Expansion organization and built the Toronto Engineering office. In addition, Habib worked at Amazon for nearly five years where he continued building and leading a large organization responsible for launching Amazon's world-class Labor Planning product. He has also founded various start-ups throughout his tenure. Habib is a champion for community engagement, and is committed to cultivating the leaders of tomorrow through university relations and hands-on mentorship. 

He is also a strong advocate for diversity and prioritizing bringing diverse talent into Canada, initiating the creation of priority immigration programs within the organizations he has supported.

What is Snowflake?

Snowflake enables every organization to mobilize their data with Snowflake’s Data Cloud. Customers use the Data Cloud to unite siloed data, discover and securely share data, and execute diverse analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single data experience that spans multiple clouds and geographies. snowflake.com

Founded in 1984, CMC Microsystems Corp. is a not-for-profit organization that operates by helping researchers and industry across Canada’s National Design Network. The group’s work involves lending assistance in the development of innovations in microsystems and nanotechnologies.

In conversation with EP&T Editor Stephen Law, Gord Harling touches on a number of projects and initiatives currently underway at CMC. Those include:

•  An IoT device design using Bluetooth and accelerometer, temp sensor, etc. for free on CMC’s GitHub repository. So far it has been used to create a backpack for an untethered rat and can monitor its brain chemistry.

•  CMC has a 32bit RISC-V core design available for free on GitHub and it is going into fabrication so that demo boards will be available soon. CMC is also working on a 64-bit core with a 64 bit vector scalar processor.

• CMC has facilitated 29 projects in quantum coding over the past three years, mainly for academics, but also for start-ups. The group has also been running CMC Basecamp training for people to design their own superconducting devices and quantum photonics. 

 www.cmc.ca/basecamp

•  CMC also has a broad offering in high performance computing from an 8 PetaFLOP AI training system, a 2 PetaFLOP inference system from Untether AI, a 42 TeraFLOP compute cluster, FPGA cluster and other hardware coming. All of this is available to academic researchers for $1,000 per year (with no usage fees) or to start-ups for $2,000 per year under our VIE program.

As most are aware, supply chain issues and semiconductor shortages have been all over the news in the past two years, with many automotive manufacturers announcing line stoppages and losses in revenue as a result. But, just how serious did things get? What has been the impact of the shortages so far?

To help us delve into this subject further, Avnet Silica recently analysed the public financial records for the major semiconductor and automotive manufacturers to reveal how low semiconductor stock levels dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the effect this has had on the automotive production lines and revenue. In this podcast episode, Mat Ransom director, supply chain programs with Avnet EMEA shares some of these key findings with our listeners.

Guest: Mat Ransom is director, supply chain programs, Avnet EMEA, and heads up Avnet Silica’s dedicated supply chain solution, MySupply. He has held a variety of roles during his 15-year career with Avnet, including global sales, service, supply chain, purchasing and operations, as well as directly managing key strategic customer and supplier supply chain engagements.

Mat leads a specialized supply chain operations team of supply chain architects and program managers across EMEA, responsible for architecting and delivering robust programs to solve some of the most complex challenges facing Avnet Silica’s customers.

In order to be successful, electronic part makers of all sizes need to excel in many different and often complex, areas of their business. Today’s challenges, ranging from global logistics to product compliance, challenges can be very daunting to designers because the industry moves so quickly and supply chains are increasingly global in nature.

Missy Hall of Digi-Key Electronics explains some of the important elements to remaining competitive in the component supplier space these days. Hall also shares her area of expertise with listeners – as this episode put its focus on the many challenges tech companies and component makers face when bringing their products to B2B markets.

Guest: Missy Hall, vice-president of new market development at Digi-Key Electronics, one of the largest electronic component distributors in North America and globally.

Embedded systems is fundamental to every electronic design, as well as the consumer end-user experience, yet they often get overlooked in most discussions around security.

In conversation with EP&T, Toronto-based Rob Wood of NCC Group explains why embedded systems do not get enough attention in cybersecurity coverage, at least not as much as applications. Wood leans on his career experience in embedded devices, having worked at both BlackBerry and Motorola Mobility in roles focused on embedded software development, product firmware / hardware security, and supply chain security.

Wood underscores the importance of ensuring that anyone producing connected devices has obtained the security framework and tools they need to make designs secure. Listeners will gain a better understanding of why attacks on embedded systems are increasing in frequency, and what you can do about it?

Guest: Rob Wood, vice-president for the hardware and embedded security services practice at NCC Group, a global cyber and software security consultancy that serves multiple sectors, geographies and technologies.

Frustrated with the complications and time constraints of prototyping a printed circuit board through traditional means, Voltera CEO & co-founder Alroy Almeida got the brainchild to build a printer that could do it on his desktop. Today, Voltera supplies major OEMs and CEMs, as well as leading educational institutions with its V-One pcb printer product.

Headquartered in the Kitchener/Waterloo region of Ontario, Voltera provides these cool tools to product developers, researchers and educators from all over the world. The pcb printers can take an idea in your head to a pcb board in your hands in minutes.  

In conversation with EP&T, Almeida shares how and why he came up with the concept of creating such a device and how it is used.

Founded in 1984, CMC Microsystems is a not-for-profit organization that operates by helping researchers and industry across Canada's National Design Network. The group’s work involves lending assistance in the development of innovations in microsystems and nanotechnologies. Our guest is Gord Harling, an R&D veteran with telcom and semiconductor firms in Canada, he also has more than two decades of experience working in conjunction with tech start-ups.

Harling provides our listeners with a deeper dive on CMC Microsystems and the role it plays in Canada’s tech development ecosystem.

With billions of new IoT devices coming online, there is a growing need for security at the network edge. IoT security provider Sequitur Labs is monitoring progress in this area and provides updates on recent advancements that are strengthening IoT security.

Today's more sophisticated hacks are occurring in edge devices, targeting different stages of their lifecycle, using over-the-air firmware updates as back doors, etc. These attacks can be exploited to take down specific network areas or entire systems.

Podcast guest: Philip Attfield, CEO, Sequitur Labs Inc.