Embedded Executive Podcast

Some “experts” in the embedded space will swear that systems based on open-source software or hardware can never be secure. At the same time, others will say that such a notion is pure nonsense. To get a better feel for the argument and understand what is accurate and what is not, I spoke to Jan Pleskac, the Co-Founder and CTO of Tropic Square, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. The company is a fabless semiconductor vendor that specializes in secure elements. Jan and I went through the process behind staying secure and the role that open source plays in it.

In a typical SoC, you handle all your processing functionality within the processor core. Makes sense, right? What if you can handle your processing within the SoC’s memory subsystem? If I understand the concept correctly, the time and power to handle those processing functions would be reduced considerably, which is needed in an AI application. So why hasn’t someone done this? Someone has, and that would be PIMIC. To learn what this means and how it works, I spoke to Subi Krishnamurthy, the Founder and CEO of PIMIC, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Functional safety is no longer a “nice to have” or “should have” in many applications, having moved to “must have” in spaces like automotive, industrial automation, medical devices, and aviation. Passing the functional safety testing process can be rigorous, especially if you’re going through it for the first time. But even the best experts take at least six months to get software certified. To understand exactly what functional safety is, what the testing process is like, and how and when a developer should get started, I spoke to Bill Lamie, the President and CEO of PX5 RTOS, and someone who’s been through the rigors of functional safety testing on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

In programming jargon, the term “real time” is not used in its literal sense, which can be confusing. The literal definition means that when something happens in real time, it happens instantaneously. But in practice, something that occurs very quickly is mistitled as being real-time. Why does the misconception continue to occur, and what problems does it cause? This is the beginning of the discussion I had with Steve Graves, the Founder and CEO of McObject, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Steve has to deal with this issue regularly, so his opinions are quite valid.

If system developers had unlimited power for their designs, they’d likely find a way to take advantage of it. And the same goes for performance. However, neither of those features is available in infinite quantities. And in just about every case, one becomes a tradeoff for the other. So, how do you manage that tradeoff, and when you do, what other factors come into play? To better handle this topic, I spoke to Praveen Vaidyanathan, the Vice President and General Manager of Micron Technology’s Data Center Business Unit, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Low-power is the ultimate priority in some WiFi networks, especially when you’re designing a battery powered device. Cameras used in remote locations are prime targets for this discussion. In some cases, access to that camera is difficult, so the user needed want to charge or replace a battery on a regular basis. To understand what the current state of the art is, both in terms of power levels and the WiFi standard itself, which is moving to version 7, I spoke to Sivaram Trikutam, the Vice President of Wi-Fi Products for Infineon on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Chip design has always been a complex process, and there is no end in sight. What has improved are the tools available to an IC designer. The chips are getting more specialized; hence, the tools must drill down further into the process than ever before. This sounds like a lot of black magic, but it becomes less cloudy when someone who understands the process walks you through it. To get more clarity for myself, I invited Scot Morrison, the Vice President of Shift Left Software Product Management at Siemens EDA, to be my guest on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Scot first lays out the problems, then walks through some of the various solutions.

Just when you thought you’d done everything you could do with Bluetooth, along comes something new and unique. At a recent technical conference, I was witness to a very cool demo that was all based on Bluetooth. Rather than attempt to describe it myself, I asked Simon Ford, the Founder of Blecon, the company providing the demo, to explain what it is, how it works, and why it’s so difficult to achieve. Hear it on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

We often say that designing secure systems means thinking about security early on in the design process. That means really early on, well before any pen is put to paper, so to speak. To understand what that means, I spoke to Denis Noel, the Director of Strategy in the Secure Connected Edge business unit at NXP on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Denis walked through each of the various steps a developer should be taking.

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this before, because it needs to be repeated, again, and again. The embedded industry needs to take security more seriously. Hacks are continuing to occur and will continue until there is a “security by design” mentality in place in our space. It’s hard to believe we are still having this discussion, but we are. I also expressed my frustration on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with Josh Heller, the Manager of Product Security at Digi International. Josh confirmed my fears, but had some great suggestions to help solve the problem.