Edge AI was once a niche topic, but now it’s driving higher productivity and enabling smarter devices by deploying AI models directly on embedded systems at the network edge. These systems perform tasks like detecting people, body positions, or recognizing hand gestures with increasing accuracy and speed. In this episode of our special Executive Insights series, host Richard Interrante speaks with Remi El Ouazzane, President of the Microcontrollers, Digital ICs and RF Products Group at STMicroelectronics about how Edge AI performance in microcontrollers is redefining expectations developers have in designing systems to deliver more intelligent features with greater ease.

Wide Bandgap technologies have been widely adopted around the world. As more customers are aiming for higher efficiency, greater power density, and reduced energy losses, design engineers are seeing the clear path forward is through Silicon Carbide or GaN technology. In this episode of our special Executive Insights series, host Riccardo Collura speaks with Kris Casey, Vice President of Marketing for the Power Solutions Group at onsemi, and Sravan Vanaparthy, Vice President of the Industrial Power Division at onsemi about the focus on their advancements in Silicon Carbide over recent years.

Embedded designs typically start with choosing the right microcontroller or microprocessor, for everything from robots to smart wearable devices. As the central function control of the system, it is essential to choose an MCU or MPU solution that will give engineers the ability to meet their evolving requirements, and to bring their innovative designs to market quickly. In this episode of our special Executive Insights series, host Richard Interrante speaks with Justin Mortimer- Technical Marketing Director, Secure Connected Edge Business Unit at NXP about the importance of scalable embedded solutions and enabling designs with easy-to-use development software, board platforms, and code examples.

Machine vision in applications continues to grow in demand, so engineers must decide on the right sensors for their designs.  For many of these applications simply giving designs the ability to "see" the world around them is not enough. In this episode Todd talks with Steve Harris Senior Director of Marketing of Industrial and Commercial Sensing at onsemi about his insights into some of their latest imagesensing technology.

In today's embedded design, engineers have the capability to include System-on-Chip (SoC) FPGAs, which not only provide the flexibility of a programmable logic matrix, but embedded processing cores as well. FPGAs are also offering more advanced layers of security today for both design and data protection. In this episode of our special Executive Insights series, host Richard Interrante talks with Bruce Weyer, Corporate VP of FPGA business at Microchip about FPGAs that have advanced security features with the flexible compute power needed for today's intelligent edge applications.

From vehicles to industrial equipment, users have begun to expect systems to recognize and react to the objects around them based on visual interpretation.  Engineers often rely on more complex processors to do this in the design, and in this episode Todd speaks with Louis Gobin, ST Micro's Product Marketing Engineer on if microcontrollers are catching up and able to meet the needs of sophisticated machine vision in embedded designs.

New technology, new material are coming into the market, helping customers speed up their development, while getting better performance, higher efficiency and higher power density. In this episode of our special Executive Insights series, host Ricardo Gallura speaks with Clayton Pillon, Vice President of SiC Business Unit at Microchip about how Silicon Carbide has changed the game for power in embedded designs.

In a world that talks more about wireless, there is still a need for a physical connection for most of our electronicss both for communication and power.  Connectors and cabling remain a critical part of our designs, and that hard physical layer is challenged with needs to be more resilient, more capable, and cost effective.  In this episode, Todd talks with Ryan Petsche-Corporate VP of Interconnect here at Fututre Electronics about the trends that are impacting the area of interconnect in embedded systems.

So many applications where traditional silicon based device and wide band gap, silicon carbide and gallium nitride are widely implemented and used in among customers worldwide. In this episode of our Executive Insights series, host Ricardo Collura speaks with Angelo Rao- General Manager for Silicon Carbide and IGBT at ST Micro about the strategy and investment around power, especially in wide band gap devices and  silicon carbide.

Artificial Intelligence has changed the server industry over the last few years, and along with Machine Learning it's already making significant inroads into the embedded space with capabilities like voice recognition, object detection, and smart sensing.  In this episode Todd welcomes Daniel Hou, Technical Marketing Engineer at NXP to discuss how technical advances in the processor space can help engineers achieve the ability to design embedded processors in with significant capability but low power.

Making smart inferences on sensor data that's available out there, like vision, while being able to recognize humans and objects or audio, recognizing local voice commands has grown in demand over the last few years. Although smarter systems still have customers very interested, we're also seeing a high demand in securing those systems. In this episode of our special Executive Insights series, Host Richard Interrante talks with Sam Geha, Executive VP IoT and Wireless Business at Infineon about data confidentiality and authentication.

Without passive components like resistors, capacitors, and inductors even the most advanced chip technology has no path forward. Every circuit ever designed, both simple and complex, requires them and their availability and occasional lack there of has often been the key story of high growth market cycles. In this first episode of Season 5, Todd speaks with Jacques Hing- Corporate VP Passives here at Future Electronics about the technology and the manufacturing advances in this area and how to select passives in projects for long term resilience

This is a wrap on another exciting season of The Current. Throughout this season, we've delved into the forefront of technological advancements, explored innovations, and engaged in stimulating conversations with industry leaders and experts. Thank you to all our guests this season. We look forward to Season 5!

A major goal of so many of our electronic designs is to allow our systems to achieve full autonomy.  Whether we're looking at creating homes that adapt to our lives on the fly, factories that are fully automated with reduced need for personnel, or self driving vehicles, user expectations on our system's capabilities continues to rise.  In this episode, Todd talks with Steve Robbins Principal Field Applications Engineer: Radar, Sensors, & RF, Infineon Sensor Group about how advances in sensor technology are allowing us to keep up in our next generation of products.

Image sensors continue to improve in capability, but illuminating the source can often be a challenge as not every application is meant to stay out of the dark.  In situations where light levels may be lower than we'd like, engineers can  utilize light wavelengths like infrared that are invisible to the eye, but perfect for our electronics' vision. In this episode, Todd talks with Russell Willner,  Sr. Marketing Manager for Visualization and Sensing products at ams OSRAM about exporing Infared (IR) and its capabilities in today's designs.

Power is one of the most fundamental problems engineers must solve in any design.  Maximizing efficiency, minimizing size, and keeping costs and design complexity low becomes more strident when dealing with AC to DC power conversion where many off the shelf power supplies can greatly simplify designs. In this episode, Todd talks with Doug Bailey, VP of Marketing at Power Integrations on whether there is still a place for designing custom AC/DC supplies, and what would be the best path for engineers.

Field Programmable Gate Arrays have been critical to our designs as engineers where speed of execution is critical, parallel operation is required, and the ability to reconfigure hardware needs to be available.  FPGA technology has been a backbone of communication infrastructure, military applications, and video and signal processing that has made our world what it is today. In this episode, Todd speaks with our own Richard Interrante Director of Future Intelligent Solutions on how the technology will continue to evolve.

Microcontroller technology continues to be critical to the development of applications. What these incredible devices allow us to bring to our products is nothing short of amazing, but with more complexity required in our designs we're demanding more from them than ever. In this episode Todd talks with Daniel Hou, Technical Marketing Engineer at NXP about his insights into this technology.

The interconnection of devices brings a whole new range of threats to personal data, identities and safety. Embedded Security continues to be a key area where engineers must focus attention to ensure systems are not providing gateways for misuse of designs that can hurt our end users. In this episode, Todd speaks with Xavier Bignalet, Product Marketing Manager at Microchip on making our systems and designs safe.

Engineers continue to build a strong knowledge of designing wireless products for general communication. Now, that communication is getting more complex with needs for indoor location, mesh networking, and precise object tracking. In this episode, Todd speaks with Matt Rose, Senior Field Applications Engineer at Panasonic about new tools that are available to make these wireless applications easier to implement.