Embedded Executive Podcast

The automobile's in-cabin user experience (UX) is undergoing some serious changes. We’re nearing the point where the automobile can be viewed as an office or entertainment center that also transports you from point A to point B. With all those changes, it’s important to ensure that these non-mission-critical functions communicate with the mission-critical tasks at some point. To make sense of this, I spoke to Chet Babla, a Senior Vice President at indie Semiconductor on his week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

The Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) provides a new approach to cybersecurity, and outlines a great model for developers to follow. Like the name implies, you should trust no one, at least initially, and assume that all networks and traffic are potential threats. We know that no network is ever 100% secure, but beginning with this assumption gives you the safest starting point and should reduce the risk of data breaches. ZTA is based on the principle of “least privilege,” which means that users and devices are only granted the permissions they need to perform their specific tasks. To help explain what this means, I spoke to Steve Hanna, a Distinguished Engineer from Infineon Technologies on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Testing high-power batteries, like those used in EVs, can be a tricky endeavor. It’s more complicated and, frankly, more dangerous than testing smaller, lower-voltage batteries. It makes sense that the testing of these packs could and should be left to recognized test experts, Tektronix in this case.In a discussion with Russ Gaubatz, a senior applications engineer, and subject matter expert for Tektronix, and formerly of Elektro-Automatik (recently acquired by Tektronix), I learned what this means. The company runs these packs through a long series of tests, a very necessary process, as you will learn in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

We’ve talked a lot about the software-defined vehicle. This week, we are talking about the electrification of that same automobile on the Embedded Executives podcast. As you might expect, it means removing some of the car's mechanical components and replacing them with electrical components. The benefits of doing that are great, as Sayeed Ahmed, a Director at Infineon Technologies states, but there are still some issues to be solved and some tradeoffs. It has to do with software, semiconductor technologies, and so on.

TSN is a standard that originated for video-streaming applications. But today, it’s finding a home in industrial applications, and it’s is now becoming irreplaceable. Hear why in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast, where I spoke to Tom Burke, who is the Global Director of Industry Standards for Mitsubishi, as well as the Global Strategic Advisor for CC-Link Partner Association (CLPA), a high-speed, high-performance industrial network that supports the IIoT and IT/OT convergence.

We spend a lot of time talking about the software-defined vehicle (SDV), and there are two very good reasons for that. One is that is it occurring, whether you know it or not or whether you want it or not. The second reason is that it is very complex, even if you’re just dealing with the HMI, as it all ties back together at some point. To sort through the issues, I invited Marcelo Williams, a Global Senior Director for Infineon Technologies to be my guest on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Great hardware is useless without great software, and vice versa. The hardware industry continues to evolve, as always, but the software side operates quite differently than it did in the past, thanks to the groundswell of open-source software. Linux has grown into an operating system that can handle nearly any available application, leading the open-source parade down where it currently stands, basically being its own supply chain. One vendor, Analog Devices, has transformed from a traditional analog supplier into not just a provider of digital products but a vendor who delivers the software mix with development kits and IDEs that bring all the technologies together—analog, digital, and software. Hear more about it from Rob Oshana, the Senior Vice President of the Software and Security Group at Analog Devices, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

If you’re not familiar with Zephyr, shame on you. It’s an open-source, real-time operating system (RTOS) for resource-constrained devices. That’s how it differs from Linux, which is more of a mainstream OS. That said, Zephyr is growing quite rapidly in popularity, for many reasons. To understand what those reasons are, and why they make sense, I chatted with Benjamin Cabe, the Lead Developer Advocate for the Zephyr Project, which fall sunder the auspices of the Linux Foundation, on this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

Avnet’s Embedded Solutions group is undergoing a change, with a new name attached to it. Known as Tria, the group will be responsible for a range of branded hardware modules, boards, and systems and all the software that comes with them. That combines the company’s vast tech support network and state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. Why did Avnet feel the need to make this move, and what does it mean to the developer, today and down the road? These are some of the questions I asked Thomas Staudinger, President of Tria and Avnet’s Embedded Solutions division, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast.

As you might expect, the code base in the software-defined vehicle is growing in leaps and bounds, with more features being added and the functionality within those features growing (and becoming more complex). Is the downside to that ballooning code base the fact that more holes are being introduced to welcome hackers? That’s where my discussion began with Priyanka Viswanathan, the Director of Quality Functional Safety and Cybersecurity at SiFive. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to hear what she had to say on the matter.