Embedded Computing Design

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? 
 

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. 
 

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.

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?

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.

Fill a room with university professors and industry people, and the conversation quickly finds its way to ?Why can?t academia better prepare their students for industry??