Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits

Thomas Keller is the Director of Platforms and Core Technology at u-blox. He learned early in his career that technology development does not always progress in a perfectly straight line. During his PhD studies, he worked on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as a candidate technology for 3G cellular network deployment. OFDM lost that initial tech battle to Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) but later returned in LTE cellular systems. In this fascinating conversation, Keller discusses the challenges facing the industry today as low-power, low-bandwidth, low-cost IoT devices attempt to connect to a 5G network focused on high-power, high-bandwidth, low-latency applications. Interestingly, much of our current 5G networks are still relying upon an LTE backend. What happens when LTE goes away? In this Moore’s Lobby podcast with our host, Daniel Bogdanoff, Keller offers his thoughts on what should come next and guidance for developers who need to navigate the phase-out of LTE worldwide. This interesting topic deserves thoughtful consideration and impacts system designers and companies across a wide range of industries.

If you enjoy hearing passionate people talk about jobs they love and technology that fascinates them, you are in for a treat. Noah Gedrimas grew up with a love of vehicles—cars, tractors, construction equipment, and snowmobiles. In college, he built a one-fifth-scale car and then programmed it to self-park, which led him to a “newfound respect for mechatronics” and its ability to support really complex maneuvers. In this interview, Gedrimas reflects with enthusiasm on his time at Continental Automotive, working on everything from autonomous valet parking to electric shuttles and semi-trucks. Now, Gedrimas is applying that passion to ground-positioning radar technology at GPR. They are using ground-penetrating radar to capture unique, sub-surface data for positioning. Inclement weather compromised line of sight, roads with poor or no lane marking, weak GPS signals, and road terrain no longer affect the uptime and availability of autonomous navigation. You will want to join our host, Daniel Bogdanoff, as he chats with Gedrimas about: -Cadavers in cars. -The feature-rich information that lies below the ground. -The compute requirements when compared to cameras or lidar. -Early adopters of GPR technology. And much more that you will not want to miss.

After beginning his career with Hewlett-Packard, David Su met a friend for lunch to learn about a new startup called Atheros. He was so excited by the vision to develop world-changing products that Su “went for lunch and never left.” At Atheros, Su had a “front-row seat” developing wireless WAN technology that transitioned from novelty to necessity while Atheros grew from a startup to a billion-dollar behemoth. That little startup was eventually acquired by another company you may have heard of: Qualcomm. And what led Su to get involved with another startup? Well, lunch, of course. Su and his friends recognized that they could use their design experience to help fix a problem that was partially of their own making: battery consumption for wireless RF products. This was the genesis of Atmosic.  With his decades of design experience, Su admits that he stands on the shoulders of giants when creating new low-power products. The company has recently expanded its RF IC offerings from Bluetooth to Zigbee and Matter over Thread. When asked how an IC design team knows when they have become either too structured or too unstructured, Su thoughtfully answered that if you never create anything innovative or your chips don’t work, you have probably fallen into one of those two ditches.  You will want to join our host, Daniel Bogdanoff, as he discusses CMOS RF, energy harvesting, and the importance of teams with Su. They touch on many other interesting topics including:  -What he remembers most fondly from his days at Atheros. -A development failure for one technology that led to success for another. -The balance of circuits, system, and software design necessary to optimize product performance.  

Silicon photonics improving speed and reducing power consumption in AI data centers. LightMatter's Passage creating efficient interconnect for chiplets. Solving bandwidth sharing and scaling issues. Klinger discussing unique traits of silicon photonics and previous startups. Future impact of Lightmatter and envisioning advancements in data centers

While leading the system design of new head-word displays for fighter pilots, Tomide Adesanmi was most excited when he got a chance to innovate. However, like most electronics design engineers, he found that the majority of his time was spent searching distributor sites for components, drawing symbols, and working with spreadsheets.  Engineers can also relate to the anxiety he felt, worrying that he might have made a silly mistake by missing a tiny detail on “page 243 of the datasheet” for a microcontroller. So, he quit his job to try to tackle the mundane problems of design using “good software, good algorithms, and electronics.” A few months later, Circuit Mind was founded. Adesanmi and the Circuit Mind team aim to allow designers to quickly optimize designs with variable weighting on size, power, cost, parts availability, and more. Our Moore’s Lobby audience of electronics engineers will definitely want to listen in as our host, Daniel Bogdanoff, and Adesanmi chat about the possible future of circuit design. You will hear: -Why it is important that Circuit Mind uses deterministic algorithms as opposed to machine learning. -Defining the team and roles necessary to build these new tools. -What company makes the best datasheets? Contact Circuit Mind to schedule an appointment to learn more, get a demo, receive a quote, or even run a trial of your design on the ACE platform.   

Over the course of his fascinating career, Mark Himelstein has worked on several significant computing technologies at historic companies like MIPS and Sun Microsystems. He has also worked as a consultant in various roles that include architect, VP of engineering, and advisor. However, RISC-V may have a greater impact on the computing field and our world than any of those previous efforts.  Himelstein gives us an insiders view on the open standard process that is often “cooperation and competition, simultaneously.” “The thing that keeps us as a community is the effort in the software ecosystem. Nobody wants to really go off and go on their own. They just don't want to do it. It's just too costly. I don't care if you're the biggest company in the world or the tiniest.”  Listen in on this episode of the Moore’s Lobby podcast as Daniel Bogdanoff and Himelstein chat about a wide range of interesting topics that include: -How Himelstein encourages people to get involved with RISC-V by telling them to not just complain about something, but join in to help make it better. -The significance of vector operations for computing and how those advantages may soon be extended to matrix operations within the ISA. -Three major things RISC-V is currently working on for future release.  

Daniel Cooley, Chief Technology Officer at Silicon Labs, shares insights from his journey in RF chip design to leading wireless IoT innovation. He emphasizes that adding wireless connectivity is just the start; the real breakthroughs happen when it enhances product functionality. Cooley discusses the economic advantages of wireless shelf labels, the importance of the Matter protocol, and how Silicon Labs collaborates with Arduino. He also highlights the need for rethinking internet infrastructure to accommodate the growing number of non-human devices.

While Moore’s Law scaling has driven incredible advancements in computing, AI, and smartphones, many applications don’t need or benefit from the most advanced semiconductor nodes. From its inception, Pragmatic Semiconductor’s goal has been to take a…well, pragmatic…approach to develop an ultra low-cost, fast cycle time alternative to traditional silicon processing. Oh, and did we mention that the resulting chips and wafers are also flexible? You will definitely want to check out this Moore’s Lobby conversation between White and our host, Daniel Bogdanoff, as they dive into: -The technology and manufacturing of thin-film silicon -Europe’s largest-ever VC funding for a semiconductor company -The potential advantages of flexible silicon for building a more robust supply chain -White’s top priorities for improving the flexible silicon ecosystem

The chip shortage made us all think about the precarious semiconductor supply chain. In response, the US government has moved to bolster the domestic industry. The CHIPS and Science Act was signed into law in August 2022, but we are still waiting to see its impact on US semiconductor manufacturing. In this podcast, we are joined by three industry insiders: Rich Simoncic, EVP of Microchip Technology. Russ Garcia, CEO of Menlo Micro. Michael Knight, President & CEO at Endries International. They will give us their perspective on the CHIPS Act and what should be done to improve the supply chain. In this engaging discussion, the group is hosted by our Moore’s Lobby host, Daniel Bogdanoff. Their discussion includes: -The confusing relationship between the CHIPS Act and the current state of the supply chain.  -The challenges of getting advanced R&D across the “valley of death.” -Is it enough? -The technologies and nodes that might be overlooked. -What should a CHIPS Act 2 invest in?  

During his fascinating career, Jack Kang has had the opportunity to work on iconic, massively successful products like the Microsoft Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Switch. Today, as one of the founding members of SiFive, Kang works alongside several of the creators of the RISC-V ISA to bring new products to market.  SiFive is developing products based on the open RISC-V standard to deliver high-performance, low-power density processors for applications from wearables to data centers, edge computing, and aerospace. The highlights of this conversation between Kang and our Moore’s Lobby host, Daniel Bogdanoff, include: -His big career break  -The transition from huge companies to a startup -Open-source versus open-standard -The security system that SiFive donated to the RISC-V community