Embedded Executive Podcast

Since we’ve turned the page on a new year, it’s time to make some predictions. I asked Brandon Lewis, the Embedded Computing Design Editor-in-Chief, to join me and make some predictions for the new year. Some are likely expected and some might surprise you. Hear our thoughts in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Newark recently conducted a poll of Makers and Professional Makers, looking at their board choices, operating environments, architectures, and so on. The results from the study were pretty eye-opening. Hence why I had a discussion with Cliff Ortmeyer, Newark’s Global Head of Technology Product Marketing and Solutions Development. We talked about results of the poll, why the respondents chose to respond they way they did, and whether developers were making choices for the right reasons. Check out our discussion in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) continues to be a force to be reckoned with within our embedded space. And I mean that in a good way. Today, we are discussing the security of consumer devices, which falls under the Matter portion of the CSA. That security design is now complete and the open-source implementation is near-ready.According to Steve Hanna, a Distinguished Engineer at Infineon Technologies, Matter will be raising the security bar to where it needs to be. Obviously, security is a moving target, and the group will continue to evolve the standard.Our second guest, Chris LaPre, Director of Technology for the CSA, speaks from the Alliance’s perspective on what needs to happen to get a large number of influential contributors to agree on a standard that continually keeps the end user in mind. Hear all that and more in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

AI should be performed at the Edge whenever possible, according to Yasser Khan,  CEO and Co-Founder of MicroAI. But there seems to be just as many reasons to do it in the Cloud. This is where the back-and-forth began in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

There are many applications that require real-time interactions. Automotive certainly fits into that category. But the term “real time” is bothersome to me, as it’s not something that’s achievable. We can get “near real time,” but that’s about as good as it gets. But is that good enough? That’s the question I asked Heather Gorr,  Senior Product Marketing Manager for the MATLAB product at Mathworks, in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

EVs can be confusing from a “what voltage does it run at” perspective. We have the 12-V lead-acid batteries that have been around for decades. But there are many new sizes, types, chemistries, and voltages. According to Patrick Kowalyk, a North American Automotive Principal Field Applications Engineer for Vicor, the way in which we deliver power within the automobile needs to change. To hear exactly how, tune in to this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

When designing your embedded system, the storage subsystem is not always at the top of the priority list. Depending on your system, that may be okay. But if you’re designing for automotive applications, that’s one way to get yourself in hot water. In this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, I talked to Robert Bielby, Micron’s Senior Director of Automotive System Architecture, to understand why the memory subsystem needs to move up the list, potentially way up.

We say it all the time: you are going to get hacked! The most important factor at this point is to minimize the damage when the inevitable occurs. If cybersecurity is not one of your top design priorities, you need to adjust your list. That said, this week’s Embedded Executives podcast guest is Alan Grau, the Vice President of Business Development for PQShield. Alan explains the pretty simple terms of what happens when an attack occurs and why it may be happening. Note that Alan is also a speaker at this year’s IoT Device Security Conference, talking place on Nov. 9 (and available any time after that). Lots of good talks, all looking at different aspects of IoT Device security, including the automotive, and industrial and consumer applications.

The IIC, formerly known as the Industrial Internet Consortium, has a new name. They’re still the IIC, but now the acronym stands for Industry IoT Consortium. You may be surprised why they made the change; I know that I was.  IIC’s Chief Technology Officer, Stephan Mellor, has the answer in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Low-end AI might be an oxymoron, because it’s hard to associate anything to do with AI as being low-end. But with AI evolving so rapidly, there really can be a case made for lower-end AI with machine vision. To understand what that means, what products fit that category, and most importantly, how it effects today’s embedded developers, check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with Donato Montanari, the Vice President and General Manager of Machine Vision at Zebra Technologies.