Embedded Executive Podcast

Quantum cryptography is very much in the spotlight these days. But do you know why? For that matter, do you understand what it means? And most importantly, if you’re an embedded developer, should you be concerned about it? Those are the important questions that I got answers to when I spoke to Thomas Prest, the Lead Cryptographic Researcher at PQShield on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast .

The 5G standard seems to be working through the embedded industry at a snail’s pace when you compare it to other aspects of our technology sector. Why is that, and what do you do about it if you’re a design engineer? To try and get a handle on how to be compliant, yet stay at the leading edge, I spoke to Mamta Gupta, the Director of Security and Communications Segment Marketing at Lattice Semicond...

Jack Ganssle is one of the most recognizable people in the embedded systems industry, starting as an engineer and working his way through the ranks to be legitimately known as one of the world’s leading experts in the space. Jack took some time from his busy schedule to walk down memory lane and discuss how the embedded space has changed over the years. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives po...

The ink is not yet dried on the Matter specification. Those in the know claim that this is one of the most important specifications to come across the electronics space in a long, long time, particularly for IoT devices makers. Are you in the know? One expert who is up to speed on all the speeds and feeds is Skip Ashton, a Distinguished Engineer with Infineon Technologies , and he was my guest on...

There are few products more popular in the embedded space than the Arduino development board. What makes that statement even more interesting has to do with the number of dev boards that have become available over the last few years. Why is Arduino so important to the embedded development community? That’s the question I posed to Arduino’s CEO, Fabio Violante. We talked the company's developm...

“Matter is a great standard, if you assume it’s just a starting point. Oh, and it’s 10 years too late.” This is how the discussion started with Ian Drew, the Chairman of Foundries.io in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . Ian, who is a long-time veteran of our embedded and IoT industries, sits in the cat-bird’s seat on this and similar topics. As you’ll hear, we went back and forth as to whe...

Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water…I’m making an analogy about secure designs. Just when you think the engineering community understands that their designs need to be secure, some research pops up to show that that’s not really the case. Even in these times of hack after hack, designers are still not doing everything they need to do to stop the bad guys. Why is this? To get to t...

The topic on Embedded Executives eventually gets around to security, the specialty of BG Networks , but we had an interesting discussion about what’s happening in today’s universities. My guest on this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast was Roman Lysecky, the CTO of BG Networks. We eventually got around to the topic at hand, one in which I wasn’t familiar with, cyber-resilience. As we break d...

The embedded community has been talking a lot about AI at the Edge. Apparently, it’s not just, as Renesas recently acquired Reality AI. That acquisition lets them leverage a large customer base as well as provides access to what the company is calling a "leading-edge toolset and series of AI models." Renesas probably could have built tools and models themselves, but not nearly as quickly...

“The IoT industry needs to change.” Those were the words uttered by this week’s Embedded Executives podcast guest, Ian Drew, the Chairman of Foundries.io . Ian is a long-time veteran of our embedded and IoT industries, and has a pretty colorful history, so you may want to take note of his comments. Tune in to the full interview now!

I say it often, "It’s just storage, what could be new or exciting about it?" And each time I express that opinion to one of the memory experts, I get an earful of what’s new and different. My conversation with Frank Chen, the CEO of Exascend, went down a similar path. Frank came up with a host of reasons why people should pay closer attention to their memory subsystems. Hear what he has...

The experts at Cycuity preach taking a holistic approach to security in your embedded system. That sounds like a good plan, but what does it mean? That’s the first question I posed to Andreas Kuehlmann, the CEO of Cycuity . And just in case you’re wondering who Cycuity is, it’s the former Tortuga Logic, with a new name. Check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast to hear more.

The LoRaWAN specification continues to introduce new products, technologies, applications, and use cases on a regular basis. The consortium recently held a large-scale conference to discuss, display, and tout the latest developments. As such, I invited Alistair Fulton, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group , to join me on this week’s Embedde...

Atomera is a semiconductor materials and IP licensing company. They acknowledge that Moore’s Law is slowing down. Manufacturers are looking for ways to reverse that trend. And as you might expect, it comes at a significant cost. Atomera has a series of improvements that could help. To learn more, I spoke to Scott Bibaud, the President and CEO of Atomera. I suggest you check out this week’s Embedde...

What RTOS dominates the embedded space? Your first guess might be Linux, but you would be wrong, by a wide margin. FreeRTOS is the winner. If you’re wondering how and why FreeRTOS came to be, this is the podcast for you. Today i'm speaking with the RTOS’s original creator, Richard Barry. Richard is now part of Amazon Web Services (AWS), but he is still leading the charge for FreeRTOS. Hear ho...

Many applications today are “software-defined.” Until recently, I would not have used that term to describe an automobile, but I’ve since been set straight. In this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast  I spoke to Jeff Chou, the CEO and founder of Sonatus , who gave me his definition of the software-defined automobile and explained why it’s far better to handle these functions in software versu...

When you have a chance to chat with somebody who is a pioneer in the embedded space, you grab it. And that’s what happened this week when Rolf Segger, Founder of Segger Microcontroller, agreed to be my guest on this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast .  Rolf is known for not pulling any punches and he was quite honest with me when we discussed what’s happening in the world of embedded. We tal...

Are you familiar with model-based systems engineering (MBSE)? I have to admit that I was not familiar with, but it looked like something I should know about. To educate myself, I had a discussion with Marco Leon, the Director of Systems Architecture Engineering at Mercury Systems , in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast . As a relatively new technique, it's designed to reduce your design...

When it comes to embedded computers for industrial applications, size does matter—sometimes. Many of the industrial platforms cut a fairly wide berth, so you can take a lot of liberties with the embedded computer board. But for those applications where space is at a premium, systems integrators don’t have the same number of options. One option that’s now available is the Interceptor from BlackPear...

Processors to handle AI at the Edge are quite complex. However, that hasn’t stopped so many companies from producing their variants. In some cases, they come from the established MCU providers, and in other cases, they come from startups. Kinara fits that latter category. As we discussed in this this week’s Embedded Executives podcast , it’s really hard to differentiate yourself. I asked the compa...

I have done lots of these Embedded Executive podcasts, a few hundred in fact. This particular podcast goes in a direction I have never gone before, and involves the mafia (yes, you read that correctly). John Costello, who serves as the Corporate Vice President Government Affairs for Microchip Technology , has some stories to tell that involve members of his (literal) family, and their dealings on...

For starters, Smith is the largest electronics distributer that I have never heard of. They are a multi-billion-dollar company. One of the strengths of the company is ensuring that its products are real (as opposed to counterfeits). That’s harder than it sounds, but vital to a developer. As we know, fake parts likely don’t provide the same operating characteristics as real parts. To understand how...

Richard Lind is about seven months into his role as CEO of IAR Systems , one of the leaders in embedded development tools. One of his biggest competitors has a huge advantage—their tool is free! Or is it really? That’s the question I asked of Richard, and he had a very interesting response in this week’s Embedded Executives podcast .

Texas Instruments is a big company. One thing that’s afforded by a company of its size is a lab that can help the various product groups on their designs. And that’s the role of Kilby Labs at TI. The group is good at assessing risk, understanding whether a product should follow through to full development, and so on. To explain it far better than that, I invited Dr. Jeffrey Morroni, the Director o...

Artificial intelligence is all the rage. Combine that with the huge amount of video that’s being captured. When you put these two phenomena together, you can (potentially) do some great things. And those great things are done by making use of the analytics that comes from the video after running through an AI engine. Confused? I know that I was, and for that reason, I invited Jaidev Amrite, the Di...