Embedded Executive Podcast

COVID-19 still starts just about every conversation, and that was the case in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, when I spoke to Jason Carlson, the CEO of congatec. But I really wanted to discuss COM-HPC with Jason, a standard that’s just about ready for prime time. If you’re not familiar, COM-HPC is a new computer-on-module standard that is a 4X improvement over existing technology. Jason says it’s a “once every 10 years” technology. Learn more about it, like I did, from Jason.

When it comes to security, nothing should be taken for granted and a developer should never assume. First, start the security discussion right at the beginning of the design. And keep it in mind throughout the process. But also, understand the cost of security. While it’s important to prevent hacks, the amount of dollars and resources spent on security must be part of an intelligent business decision. To understand better what that means, check out my interview with Dr. Andreas Kuehlmann, the Executive Chairman and Interim CEO at Tortuga Logic in this week’s Embedded Executives 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.