DevTalk with Rich and Vin

AI means different things to different people. For example, a marketer might have a different definition than an engineer when asked what AI is. In today’s complex world, both may be right. But when consumers need to understand what is AI about their devices, the waters can get muddied pretty quickly. On this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin, we share our definitions, which are open to debate.Once the AI issue is cleared up, Rich and Vin discuss a recent news item—Arm is becoming a silicon provider. While that could mean lots of things to Arm’s existing customers, we look at how it might affect the engineering community.

You need some sort of UI on your system. It may be quite elaborate, or it may be very simple. In either case, designing that UI should not be a barrier to entry for an embedded system. Enter LVGL, or Light and Versatile Graphics Library, an open-source embedded graphics library that aims to (and accomplishes) eliminating that barrier. To understand why this is even an issue and how designers can get past it, Rich and Vin spoke to Gabor Kiss-Vamosi, the Founder and CEO of LVGL, on this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin.

Does the academic world do a good job at getting its students ready to work in the real world? Is it even possible to do that now, given the pace AI is forcing industry to move at, and knowing that academia doesn’t typically move that quickly? This is the tip of the iceberg from the discussion that Vin and I had on our latest DevTalk podcast with John Janowiak, the Executive Director of ECEDHA (the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association). We look at who is doing a good job at addressing the issues and why, both domestically and globally.

We know that AI is everywhere. An area of particular concern for the DevTalk crew is how AI fits into today’s higher education programs. With our special guest Kevin Lu, the Associate Dean for Engineering and Science for Undergraduate Studies at Stevens Institute of Technology, we look at two specific areas—how do you ensure that students aren’t “cheating” by making use of AI, and second, how do you ensure that the careers you are getting them ready for are the right careers, in this changing world of AI? It’s a fascinating topic, and one that will evolve regularly.

The user interface, aka the HMI, is oftentimes the only interaction a user has with a platform. Hence, it represents your brand, and it needs to look great and work great. On this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin, we discuss what it takes to properly design a great HMI, as well as how much effort needs to go into it. And we get an assist from Renesas, who are making HMIs one of the company’s core enabling technologies. To further simplify the process, Renesas will host a webinar on this topic on February 25th. 

Every once in a while, we hit a home run when it comes to bringing guests onto the DevTalk podcast, and today we did just that. We managed to wrangle in Hidetoshi Shibata, who has been in his current CEO role at Renesas for about six years. Toshi was very forthcoming with us, as we went through his fairly colorful past, and more importantly, the decisions he has had to make as the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in our space. 

If you believe all the hype, it seems that AI is being integrated into nearly every embedded computing platform. It may not be everyone, but the percentage is fairly high and growing. So, as a developer, do you know what your starting point should be for your project? What Vin and I discovered, thanks to Avijit Sinha, Senior VP of Strategy and Global Business Development at Wind River, is that a whole lot of questions need to be answered before you even get to the starting point. Hear it for yourself on this episode of the DevTalk with Rich and Vin podcast.

You likely have heard of the Rust programming language, known for its safety features. But, like me, you may not know its details, and frankly, why you should be considering it for your next design. For those reasons, Rich and Vin invited Jonathan Pallant, a Senior Engineer with Ferrous Systems, to join them on this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin.

Just about everybody in the engineering space has reverse-engineered a product at some point. It might have been for professional reasons, like seeing how a competitor is attacking a problem or simply seeing how they engineered a product. Or it could have been for personal reasons, because the product stopped working, or simply because they wanted to. Note: If you search for “Tear Down” on Embedded Computing Design, you can see the products we’ve reverse-engineered.Then there are those people, like the folks at emproof, who get paid to reverse-engineer products, particularly on the software side. Tim Blazytko, the company’s Chief Scientist, Head of Engineering, and Co-Founder, joined us on this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin to share some of his experiences with reverse engineering.

Theoretically, you can do whatever functions you require in hardware or software. The most efficient way to complete those functions is with the proper mix of hardware and software. The important question is how you determine what gets implemented in hardware versus what’s in software. What if you can do a quasi-hardware-software mix? That’s what is available through embedded FPGAs. To understand this technology far better than Vin or I can, we invited Steve Mensor, a Vice President at Achronix Semiconductor onto the DevTalk with Rich and Vin podcast to explain it in terms that we could understand.

Most people in our embedded industry are familiar with Steve Sanghi, who has been the CEO of Microchip for more than thirty years. Steve took over the company in its not-so-successful early days and brought it to the great heights we know today, as a multi-billion dollar semiconductor powerhouse.Steve stepped down from the CEO role a few years ago and is now doing lots of philanthropic work and writing a few books. We were thrilled and honored to have Steve join us on the latest episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin.

Maher Matta, the President of the Americas division of Infineon Technologies agreed to join Rich and Vin on this episode of the podcast. The audience will likely relate to the route taken by Maher, as he came up through the engineering ranks, starting as a bench engineer. As you might expect, there were some bumps and bruises along the way. If you subscribe to the theory that the proof is in the pudding, the evidence is clear—the reign under Maher is working. The company is thriving and is a leader in many of the spaces in which it competes. Hear what Maher had to say about his rise through the ranks.

The space program has come quite far in the last decade when it comes to sending people to Mars and building a colony there. If you’re wondering what it would take to accomplish that, check out the book Colonizing Mars by Frank Norris. Or, take the easy way out and check out the latest DevTalk with Rich and Vin podcast, where we invited Frank on as a guest.

As the complexity of our embedded systems has exploded, particularly in the automotive space, a requirements-management tool has moved into the “must-have” category. With the volume of people, the humongous code base, and the geographically disparate design teams, it’s nearly impossible to maintain and track every aspect of a design. With all that said, Rich and Vin talk about this need and the fact that many design teams choose to deploy ancient, rudimentary methods that too often lead to failure. The duo is joined by Neil Stroud, the General Manager for Automotive and Semiconductor at Jama Software. It results in a very lively discussion. Check out this episode of Dev Talk with Rich and Vin.

Engineers know how important it is to test their prototypes. What they don’t seem to get is that the testing process needs to start at the beginning of the design process, not at the end. And testing must continue all the way through the entire design process. The reasons for this are what Rich and Vin go through on this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin.

In this episode of DevTalk with Rich (Nass) and Vin (D’Agostino), Matt Johnson, the CEO of Silicon Labs joins us. It’s a lively discussion, starting in rural Maine, and ending with “Should engineers be concerned that AI will take their jobs?” Listen in for some interesting responses.

Welcome to a slightly different version of our DevTalk with Rich and Vin podcast. In addition to doing our traditional tech talks, which you’ve clearly told us that you enjoy, we will be producing discussions with CEOs. But we won’t be going through the usual company blah, blah, blah. We’re going to dig a little deeper and find out what really drives these individuals, who are obviously very determined, or they wouldn’t be in the positions they are in. And we told them that to be a guest, they couldn’t limit or filter our questions in any way; anything and everything is on the table. To get us started, we spent some time with Ron Konezny, the CEO of Digi International. 

Chiplets are quite in vogue these days. But are they the solution to all your problems? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand what they are, how they work, and how you can implement them in your design. Check out this installment of DevTalk with Rich and Vin and you’ll at least have a baseline understanding of this technology.

This is the time of year for predictions: What do you think will happen in 2024? As you might expect, Rich and Vin take a different approach. They look at the things that were predicted for 2023, but didn’t actually pan out. Is AI the panacea that we expected? Maybe not. It’s likely that more partnerships must occur for this technology to match the hype. Tune in and let us know if you agree or disagree with our opinions.

In the golden era of electrical engineering, when yours truly was a budding designer, we worked with a processor, like an 8051 or an 8085, and we wrote some code to go with it. Programmable log? It existed, but those things were too darn expensive for what we called mainstream or mid-range applications. Fast forward to today, and you’d be hard pressed to come up with application that doesn’t make use of programmable logic.In this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin, we look at today’s landscape of FPGAs, particularly those that are, in theory, aimed at the mid-range of the market. And we bring in a special guest, Gordon Hands, a Senior Director with Lattice Semiconductor.

When content gets posted to Embedded Computing Design that’s latest “The Basics of …” or “XYZ 101,” the content usually gets tons of page views. I always wondered why that was the case. Are our engineers not as knowledgeable as we think? Are they just checking to make sure their assumptions are correct? I decided this would be a good topic for Vin, who teaches classes in some of these basics. Check out this edition of DevTalk with Rich and Vin to see the response.

Are you wondering what would be considered a practical application for AI at the endpoint (the place where the data is captured)? Well, you’re in luck, because Rich is moderating a panel at Renesas’ AI Live virtual conference that specifically covers that topic. To get one more opinion on what is a practical application, Rich and Vin discuss exactly that, and as you’d expect, Vin dives in pretty deep. Check it out, and also check out the session at the virtual conference.

Seemingly, if you've read any news report that touches on the technology sector, there’s some mention of artificial intelligence. But too often, we hear people talking about AI as an application, and that’s wrong, just like the IoT is not an application. Rather, it’s an enabler to other applications. AI helps enhance your XYZ application, making it better, faster, etc. But that’s all it is, a means to an end. If you don’t believe me, check out this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin podcast.

Whether you’re aware of it or not. AI is pervading many of our “traditional” applications, such as HVAC. Adding some smarts to this equipment allows the HVAC system to perform longer and more efficiently, resulting in a better user experience and a cost savings. To get a better handle on how this works and how it should be implemented, Rich and Vin spoke to Nalin Balan, a Business Development Manager for Reality AI, a Renesas company, on this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin.More detail will be available on a related webinar titled Use AI/ML to Deploy Smart Self-Diagnosing HVAC Systems, occurring on August 9, 11:00 AM ET.

AI seems to be omni-present. It’s in the news, it’s in our classrooms, and it’s certainly in our engineering labs. But are we spending too much time discussing the technology that’s the current “new thing,” or is it really the greatest technology of our lifetime? In this episode of DevTalk with Rich and Vin, we ponder that question, and make a determination. Tune in to find out what we think. During the podcast, we reference the AI Day Virtual Conference. Check out the link for more info.

While Rich and Vin usually believe they all the answers to all the design-related questions, that may not always be the case. For example, when the question of where to begin your AI-based design came up, the “experts” felt in was prudent to bring in someone even more expert. In this case, that was Stuart Feffer, of Renesas. Note that Stuart will be conducting a webinar on this topic.

AI and machine learning are relatively new technologies in the embedded space. And the only way an application space can grow is by having a robust ecosystem. Some may argue that such an ecosystem already exists for AI, while others say that developers should wait a bit before diving in.To get a handle on where this important topic stands, Rich and Vin sat with Kaushal Vora, a Senior Director at Renesas. Kaushal works with suppliers in this space and is lending a hand in the creation of the AI ecosystem.Note that we are holding a webcast on a very similar topic that you may find valuable. The webcast is May 16 at 11:00AM ET.