Inside Electronics

Creating On-Chip MEMS Sensors in CMOS

Nanusens creates nanoscale sensor structures inside the CMOS layers using standard CMOS processes within the same production flow as making the control electronics on the same chip. This approach reduces the size and cost as it benefits from the vast economies of scale of using giant CMOS fabs. The resulting single chip solution has a packaged size of 0.5 mm³. This episode delves into the technology, its future, and some limitations.

Utilizing Time-Sensitive Networking in Industrial Control

Christian Bornschein, Manager of Marketing & Sales at Port Industrial Automation, talks about how Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is employed in industrial automation. We also discuss some real-world examples and how TSN enables simpler, more effective industrial control product development. 

RAID in the NVMe Era

RAID, redundant array of independent disks, uses redundancy to provide a more robust disk drive array capable of operation even with the loss of a drive. RAID 1 replicates data with a 50% overhead. RAID 5 and 6 are more common in larger arrays with less overhead as more drives are added to the mix but with a tradeoff in performance.  
Mark Anthony, Product Line Manager at Microchip Technology, talks about the company's SmartRAID 4300 Series, which is designed to accelerate the operation of RAID arrays implemented build on NVMe drives.

The Importance of Chipscale Packaging in Electronics

AI workloads and other advanced computing applications continue to expand, pressuring the development community with the dual challenges of performance and manufacturability. Traditional SoCs are approaching their limits in terms of size, yield, and cost, and one solution lies in chiplet-based architectures. In this episode, we talk to Larry Zu, CEO at Sarcina Technology, and how the company is deploying interconnect to minimize signal crosstalk and enhance signal integrity.

Focusing on AI at the Edge

Synaptics is well known for their touch technology, but they do a lot more including their new Astra SL2610 family of system-on-chip (SoC) that incorporates Google’s open source, Coral artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator. Synaptics’ Vikram Gupta talks about the Synaptics' continuing push for edge AI and how that is tied into their other offerings that touch on everything from wireless connectivity to biometrics.  

The State of Silicon Carbide in Power Electronics

Wide-bandgap semiconductors like silicon carbide (SiC) have changed the landscape of electronics and have fomented a revolution in power conversion. In this podcast, we talk to Adam Barkley, VP, Power Technology Development at Wolfspeed, about the state of the industry in silicon carbide and where the industry is going.

The Evolving Cloud Infrastructure

We can simulate everything very exactly, but when it comes to that analog interface between the system and reality, you must be very careful because sometimes things don't behave in the analog realm the way they're predicted to. In this episode, we talk to Dermot O'Shea, CEO of Taoglas, about the state of the cloud and IoT and the challenges in developing products to operate well within it. 

Talking about Test with Liquid Instruments

The world of test and measurement is getting more complex and challenging in many ways. There are multiple factors impacting the T&M industry, from materials to new topologies to smaller form factors with even higher levels of integration and power density. In this episode, we talk to the CEO of Liquid Instruments, Daniel Shaddock, about the current situation in the test and measurement industry and the company’s software-defined test solutions.

For Really Low Power Neural Networks Try Spiking Neural Networks

Spiking neural networks (SNN), also known as neuromorphic computing, are one way to implement artificial intelligence/machine learning models. It has significant advantages over the more popular digital deep neural networks (DNN) like convolutional neural networks (CNN), including very low power operation.  
Innatera’s CEO, Sumeet Kumar, taks about how the company's new, ultra low power microcontroller can provide always-on (AON) SNN support in battery power- or energy harvesting-based applications.

Defining a Software Defined Vehicles

Siemens provides a wide range of design tools for developing hardware and software including ones targeted at software defined vehicles (SDVs). In this episode, David Fritz, Vice President of Hybrid and Virtual Systems at Siemens, talks about SDV and the need for advanced tools and simulation support to meet the safety requirements while providing the functionality of higher SAE levels.