Episodes

There are a lot of good reasons to NOT send all of our conversations off to the cloud, but we do it anyway because it’s significantly cheaper to do in the cloud. But what if there were some unexpected, inexpensive alternative for doing voice processing at the edge? Also, we’ll examine reliability in complex systems, and for that we’re going to revisit the Boeing 737 Max, two of which crashed earlier this year. And, we’re also going to revisit autonomous vehicles and driving safety. When it com...

There are a lot of good reasons to NOT send all of our conversations off to the cloud, but we do it anyway because it’s significantly cheaper to do in the cloud. But what if there were some unexpected, inexpensive alternative for doing voice processing at the edge? Also, we’ll examine reliability in complex systems, and for that we’re going to revisit the Boeing 737 Max, two of which crashed earlier this year. And, we’re also going to revisit autonomous vehicles and driving safety. When it com...

The AI Hardware Summit in Silicon Valley. This year’s edition did not go as planned. Also, the semiconductor industry is, of course global. India has an ambition to build a thriving semiconductor industry, building on the companies based there that have been designing chips for many, many years. Does the country have the infrastructure to make good on its ambitions? And, we have a report from the Frankfurt Motor Show, traditionally one of the biggest shows of the year in the automotive industr...

The AI Hardware Summit in Silicon Valley. This year’s edition did not go as planned. Also, the semiconductor industry is, of course global. India has an ambition to build a thriving semiconductor industry, building on the companies based there that have been designing chips for many, many years. Does the country have the infrastructure to make good on its ambitions? And, we have a report from the Frankfurt Motor Show, traditionally one of the biggest shows of the year in the automotive industr...

The AI Hardware Summit in Silicon Valley. This year’s edition did not go as planned. Also, the semiconductor industry is, of course global. India has an ambition to build a thriving semiconductor industry, building on the companies based there that have been designing chips for many, many years. Does the country have the infrastructure to make good on its ambitions? And, we have a report from the Frankfurt Motor Show, traditionally one of the biggest shows of the year in the automotive industr...

All of the elements of the 5G consumer business are coming together. Network operators are building out infrastructure to expand 5G cellular coverage in more markets. What’s needed next is a wider variety of 5G smartphones. Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung – three of the most important manufacturers of integrated circuits for smartphones – all happened to announce new 5G silicon last week. We talk about what was announced and where 5G goes from here. Artificial intelligence is being used to power ...

All of the elements of the 5G consumer business are coming together. Network operators are building out infrastructure to expand 5G cellular coverage in more markets. What’s needed next is a wider variety of 5G smartphones. Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung – three of the most important manufacturers of integrated circuits for smartphones – all happened to announce new 5G silicon last week. We talk about what was announced and where 5G goes from here. Artificial intelligence is being used to power ...

All of the elements of the 5G consumer business are coming together. Network operators are building out infrastructure to expand 5G cellular coverage in more markets. What’s needed next is a wider variety of 5G smartphones. Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung – three of the most important manufacturers of integrated circuits for smartphones – all happened to announce new 5G silicon last week. We talk about what was announced and where 5G goes from here. Artificial intelligence is being used to power ...

Xilinx just released one honking huge field-programmable gate array. We’ll discuss why anyone would need an FPGA more than one-and-a-half times bigger than the previous biggest. The political protests in Hong Kong have repercussions for the nearby technology hub of Shenzhen – and for the electronics industry at large. Netflix just debuted a documentary called “American Factory” that examines what happened when a Chinese manufacturer of glass products for the automotive market tried to open a p...

Xilinx just released one honking huge field-programmable gate array. We’ll discuss why anyone would need an FPGA more than one-and-a-half times bigger than the previous biggest. The political protests in Hong Kong have repercussions for the nearby technology hub of Shenzhen – and for the electronics industry at large. Netflix just debuted a documentary called “American Factory” that examines what happened when a Chinese manufacturer of glass products for the automotive market tried to open a p...

Xilinx just released one honking huge field-programmable gate array. We’ll discuss why anyone would need an FPGA more than one-and-a-half times bigger than the previous biggest. The political protests in Hong Kong have repercussions for the nearby technology hub of Shenzhen – and for the electronics industry at large. Netflix just debuted a documentary called “American Factory” that examines what happened when a Chinese manufacturer of glass products for the automotive market tried to open a p...

Homomorphic encryption. It’s… well, it’s really complicated. Just stick around and we’ll explain it all. Chinese memory chip supplier GigaDevices just make a huge splash in China introducing a line of RISC-V microcontrollers – the company claims they’re the first general purpose RISC-V MCUs ever. We’ll discuss why this MCUs are significant. Ultra WideBand is back, this time with some brand new capabilities. NXP and Volkswagen collaborated on a clever anti-theft technique for cars that makes us...

Homomorphic encryption. It’s… well, it’s really complicated. Just stick around and we’ll explain it all. Chinese memory chip supplier GigaDevices just make a huge splash in China introducing a line of RISC-V microcontrollers – the company claims they’re the first general purpose RISC-V MCUs ever. We’ll discuss why this MCUs are significant. Ultra WideBand is back, this time with some brand new capabilities. NXP and Volkswagen collaborated on a clever anti-theft technique for cars that makes us...

Homomorphic encryption. It’s… well, it’s really complicated. Just stick around and we’ll explain it all. Chinese memory chip supplier GigaDevices just make a huge splash in China introducing a line of RISC-V microcontrollers – the company claims they’re the first general purpose RISC-V MCUs ever. We’ll discuss why this MCUs are significant. Ultra WideBand is back, this time with some brand new capabilities. NXP and Volkswagen collaborated on a clever anti-theft technique for cars that makes us...

AMS decided to purchase Osram. The former specializes in sensors, the latter in photonics; together they’ll chart an intriguing technological roadmap. We’ll find out what the combination will mean for the market. The Hot Chips conference was held this week. We’ve got a rundown of one of the hottest, an unconventional wafer-scale AI processor from secretive startup Cerebras. Also today: smart water bottles. These are computerized water bottles complete with display screens and WiFI connectivity...

AMS decided to purchase Osram. The former specializes in sensors, the latter in photonics; together they’ll chart an intriguing technological roadmap. We’ll find out what the combination will mean for the market. The Hot Chips conference was held this week. We’ve got a rundown of one of the hottest, an unconventional wafer-scale AI processor from secretive startup Cerebras. Also today: smart water bottles. These are computerized water bottles complete with display screens and WiFI connectivity...

AMS decided to purchase Osram. The former specializes in sensors, the latter in photonics; together they’ll chart an intriguing technological roadmap. We’ll find out what the combination will mean for the market. The Hot Chips conference was held this week. We’ve got a rundown of one of the hottest, an unconventional wafer-scale AI processor from secretive startup Cerebras. Also today: smart water bottles. These are computerized water bottles complete with display screens and WiFI connectivity...

This is your Briefing for the week ending August 16th. Photonics – it’s not just for fiber optics anymore. In this episode, we’ve got a discussion about photonics, quantum sensors, and the potential for an all-optical computer. Broadcom bought Symantec last week. We ask editor Rick Merritt, Why on Earth a chip company would want to get into the market for business software? Over the years, the EDA industry has developed some marvelously sophisticated tools for testing and verifying the design...

This is your Briefing for the week ending August 16th. Photonics – it’s not just for fiber optics anymore. In this episode, we’ve got a discussion about photonics, quantum sensors, and the potential for an all-optical computer. Broadcom bought Symantec last week. We ask editor Rick Merritt, Why on Earth a chip company would want to get into the market for business software? Over the years, the EDA industry has developed some marvelously sophisticated tools for testing and verifying the design...

This is your Briefing for the week ending August 16th. Photonics – it’s not just for fiber optics anymore. In this episode, we’ve got a discussion about photonics, quantum sensors, and the potential for an all-optical computer. Broadcom bought Symantec last week. We ask editor Rick Merritt, Why on Earth a chip company would want to get into the market for business software? Over the years, the EDA industry has developed some marvelously sophisticated tools for testing and verifying the design...

Are you one of the hundreds of millions of people who can't wait to get a 5G cell phone? Your wait is almost over. Almost. Do you remember ultra-wideband? It was proposed a few years ago. Didn't catch on. But now it's back. The new ultra-wideband is based on a different technology, has new capabilities and is aimed at completely different applications. You'd think they'd come up with a new name, yeah? Also this week, Dylan McGrath got a rare one-on-one interview with Bob Swan, the CEO of Intel...

Are you one of the hundreds of millions of people who can't wait to get a 5G cell phone? Your wait is almost over. Almost. Do you remember ultra-wideband? It was proposed a few years ago. Didn't catch on. But now it's back. The new ultra-wideband is based on a different technology, has new capabilities and is aimed at completely different applications. You'd think they'd come up with a new name, yeah? Also this week, Dylan McGrath got a rare one-on-one interview with Bob Swan, the CEO of Intel...

Are you one of the hundreds of millions of people who can't wait to get a 5G cell phone? Your wait is almost over. Almost. Do you remember ultra-wideband? It was proposed a few years ago. Didn't catch on. But now it's back. The new ultra-wideband is based on a different technology, has new capabilities and is aimed at completely different applications. You'd think they'd come up with a new name, yeah? Also this week, Dylan McGrath got a rare one-on-one interview with Bob Swan, the CEO of Intel...

This is your Briefing for the week ending August 2nd. We want the Internet of things to be smart, but being smart requires processing power – which will be lacking in millions of IoT devices. It’s what we call in the business “a conundrum.” But – there may be an answer! You’ll hear what that is. As we reported last week, the biggest companies in the world are beginning to compete with their own chip suppliers. The latest example is Alibaba, which just released a high-performance processor of i...