EE Times Current

This week’s podcast: A few years back, engineers created the SAM car, a vehicle that enabled quadriplegic former Indy racer Sam Schmidt to drive again. Now they’ve followed with the SAM suit, an exoskeleton that let Schmidt dance with his daughter at her wedding. Sam, the SAM car, and the SAM suit, with Arrow Electronics chief marketing officer Victor Gustaf Gao.

This week’s podcast: EE Times just published the 2021 edition of the Silicon 100, our latest list of startups that merit everyone’s attention. In this episode we talk Peter Clarke, the impresario behind the Silicon 100, about the latest round of startups and what the list says about where the electronics industry is heading.

This week’s podcast: An interview with former NSC member Brigadier General (ret.) Robert Spalding, now the CEO of a company that just emerged from stealth mode with a technology that will not only battle-harden modern 5G networks, it’ll help pave the way to the post-smartphone world. The world is courting disaster by making more and more of everyday life reliant on 5G systems that are vulnerable to cyberespionage.

On this week’s podcast: John Glenn was the third person to do everything he’s most famous for as an astronaut, so why does he have such an outsized place in world history? In this episode we talk with Jeff Shesol, who puts Glenn’s orbiting of the Earth in perspective in his new book Mercury Rising. Shesol reveals for the first time ever that Glenn’s flight was far more perilous than anyone had ever let on before.

On this week’s podcast: Colonial Pipeline got hacked, which forced the company to shut down the gasoline supply to much of the East Coast for about a week. People are finally beginning to understand how widely vulnerable we all are to cyberattacks. But how vulnerable are we? And what can we do about it? A conversation with cybersecurity expert Damon Small of NCC Group.

On this week’s podcast: Kristina M. Johnson is an engineer who has had a hand in several innovations in optoelectronics, started companies, run engineering schools, and served in as an Undersecretary in the Energy Department. We talk with her about encouraging young engineers, her experiences in engineering, and about receiving the inaugural IEEE Dresselhaus Medal.

On this week’s podcast: The adoption of renewable energy sources complicates the process of managing power grids. To compensate, the industry is trying to develop massive storage batteries, but what if we were to tap the batteries in electric vehicles instead? We talk with Infineon’s Ritesh Tyagi about vehicle to grid technology, or V2G.

This week’s podcast: Space exploration was once the exclusive province of nation-states. Now space is being commercialized. But what does that mean, exactly? Where are we heading, and how will we get there? In this episode, the new space race — what it means for aerospace, communications, nanomedicine, and for humanity in general. Our guest is futurist Ian Khan.

This week’s podcast: There is so much more to learn before machine vision is anywhere near as capable as human eyesight, but we’re making progress toward that goal all the time. This week we discuss progress in the field of machine vision with Jeff Bier, founder of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance.

This week’s podcast: The concept of smart cities got a lot of buzz 20 years ago, and then the hype died. But in the intervening years, there’s been a lot of activity preparing for a resurgence of smart city efforts. This week we examine what’s happening with smart cities, and why smart city technology might be on the verge of significantly wider adoption, with our guest Mari Silbey of smart city advocates US Ignite.

This week’s podcast: Silicon Labs just sold off a thriving business line that represented 40 percent of sales. Junko Yoshida interviews Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle on why a company would do something like that. Also, the Artful Engineer, with application engineer and singer/songwriter Jim Heckroth.

This week’s podcast: Nvidia is as dominant in its area of expertise — GPUs, as Arm is in its area of expertise — processor core designs. Each already has an enormous amount of market power. Is letting them combine a good idea? A critical look at the proposed combination of Nvidia and Arm with analyst Mike Feibus, who’s got a new report examining the potential merger.

This week’s podcast: Ten years ago, Arm introduced its v8 architecture of its processor cores, which turned out to be a pretty big deal. The company just revealed v9. The announcement was light on details, but details were available if you just looked for them. Tirias analyst Kevin Krewell looked for them. We talk with him about what he found.

This week’s podcast: Every year, the automotive industry is offering vehicles with increasingly autonomous capabilities. There is a problem in how it describes its progress that is already undermining vehicle safety. This week: the trouble with Level 3. Also, workers at an Amazon facility are voting on whether or not to unionize. A look at the nature of work in the high tech industry.

This week’s podcast: People were wondering if Intel would finally get out of the IC manufacturing business. Instead, it’s going to broaden its manufacturing operations in a standalone foundry business. We talk with analysts Jim McGregor and Kevin Krewell, who explain the move. Also, we’ve got a new, up-to-the-minute reference guide on gallium GaN power electronics; we preview what’s in it.

This week’s podcast: Electronics manufacturer love to call their products reliable, but are they really? One way to find out is to take them places where failure is not an option. Our guest this week is engineer and mountaineer Matt DuPuy. We talk about relying on gadgets in places that are hostile to humans and electronics alike. Also — science & art are more akin than we realize. An interview with engineer and musician Jack Weast from Intel.

This week’s podcast: Colin Barnden, an analyst and a regular contributor to EE Times, recently came to an intriguing supposition: car makers are likely to give up their factories, just like most semiconductor manufacturers gave up their fabs. This week Junko and I talk with Colin about his rather startling prediction.