EETimes On Air

Dr. Charlotte Frenkel from the Technical University of Delft set records with a low-power neuromorphic chip she designed as part of her Ph.D. In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about what she has learned about building simplicity into chips and integrity into benchmarks. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

The semiconductor industry is undergoing a shift with the rapid adoption of multi-die design, driven by the promise of improved power, performance, and area (PPA). But with innovation comes complexity, and one of the biggest challenges is ensuring silicon reliability and health through effective multi-die testing.In this episode, we dive deep into the world of multi-die design for test: what it means, how it differs from traditional monolithic design testing, and why it's critical for the future of semiconductor manufacturing. Learn how testing spans from individual dies to multiple dies to die-to-die links, and why silicon data is essential for maintaining multi-die health during both manufacturing and in-field operations. We will explore the future of multi-die design for test and discuss Silicon Lifecycle Management (SLM) strategies that designers can implement today to stay ahead.

Dharmendra Modha's TrueNorth chip added the word neuromorphic to the technorati lexicon back in 2014. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Sunny Bains of University College London about how that project led to his work on NorthPole and the axiomatic approach he took to design. 

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Terry Sejnowski talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London about how information flows both ways between neuroscience and engineered intelligence, proposes a new way of looking at memory and considers the Hopfield-Hinton Nobel Prize. 

Dr. Jennifer Hasler of Georgia Tech is best known for her work with field programmable analog arrays (FPAAs). In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks about the importance of, and progress in, analog electronics for AI with Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London. Discussion follows with Dr .Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Tony Lewis, CTO of BrainChip, and four other key scientists talk to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London. They discuss their business strategy, their temporal event-based neural network (TENN) and the next iteration of the Akida chip. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

In this episode of Brains and Machines, emeritus Prof. Rodney Brooks of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, currently CTO of Robust AI, talks about bottom-up and top-down approaches to robotics and AI with Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Prof Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Many IC design teams struggle with tight deadlines and limited resources. The industry is constantly searching for new ways to improve efficiency without compromising design quality. While they might find tools that run incrementally faster, the real gains come from adjustments to the design flow – including what we call ‘shift-left' strategies that pull signoff-quality verification into the design implementation stage. Join our host, Eric Singer, for a compelling interview with David Abercrombie, Product Management Director of Artificial Intelligence & Licensing Applications at Siemens EDA.

Dr. Katie Schuman of the University of Tennessee explains the advantages of evolutionary approaches in neural processing to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Sunny Bains talks to four key figures at Innatera, a spin out from the University of Delft in the Netherlands. They are hoping that their latest spiking neural network chip will become AI of choice for people working on sensor applications. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Renesas, known for its industry-leading MCU and MPU portfolio, has a comprehensive power management portfolio addressing existing and emerging applications. This compelling interview covers how Renesas is addressing power challenges in the automotive and industrial sectors, including solutions for xEV traction inverters, zonal control, and portable power stations. Renesas' approach emphasizes complete, scalable designs and rapid prototyping, facilitating faster time to market for manufacturers.

UCL's Dr. Sunny Bains talks parallelism, neural net efficiency and risk taking with Caltech's Prof. Carver Mead. Now an emeritus professor, Mead has been instrumental in the development of chip design, and was one of the first employees of Noyce and Moore, which later became Intel. He's also one of the founders of the field of neuromorphic engineering. Discussion follows with Dr Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

There is a lot of hype in the industry around AI, but behind the hype there is the reality. That reality is that AI really is impacting virtually every aspect of semiconductor design. However, its not as simple as taking general purpose AI solutions and hoping they work for EDA, the risks are too high and when dealing with parts per billion (or trillion) in acceptable errors, hallucinations are not acceptable. What is needed are Verifiable AI solutions that deliver results that users can trust and that reduce the overall resources needed to complete a task. At Siemens EDA we have been able to leverage Verifiable AI to accelerate virtually every aspect of the design and verification process. 

The podcast interview explores the role of RISC-V in the automotive sector. It begins with a brief introduction to RISC-V, explaining it as an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA). The discussion then shifts to current automotive trends from a processing perspective, highlighting advancements and the increasing importance of robust, high-performance computing. 

In this special episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Dr. Sunny Bains and Dr. Giulia D'Angelo talk to four early career researchers: Dr. Kenneth Stewart, a computer scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC; Dr. Laura Kriener, a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Bern in Switzerland; Jens Pedersen, a Ph.D. student at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden; and Dr. Fabrizio Ottati, an AI/ML computer architect at NXP Semiconductors in Hamburg, Germany. They discuss learning rules for spiking neural networks, primitives for computations on neuromorphic hardware, and the benefits and drawbacks of neuromorphic engineering. 

In this podcast, we talk focus on security, talking to Infineon Technologies about the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and its implications for the entire supply chain, plus a chat with zeroRISC about the role of open-source silicon security in embedded systems and IoT.

In this episode, Dr. Sunny Bains talks to Dr. Dylan Muir, the head of research at SynSense. They discuss the company's products, including Speck, Xylo, and Rockpool, some of the design choices that were made to bring these to market, and their recent acquisition of sister company IniVation. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Fortiss research institute in Munich, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

This week's EE Times Current features three exclusive interviews recently conducted by embedded.com's editor-in-chief, Nitin Dahad at Embedded World 2024 in Nuremberg. Nitin discussed topics including AI inferencing, Software Ecosystems and Trends in Industrial Automation. 

In this episode, Dr. Sunny Bains talks with Professor Christian Mayr from the Technical University of Dresden, who worked on SpiNNaker with Steve Furber for many years. He is taking that project into the future with SpiNNaker 2, which is mostly built, SpiNNaker 3, which is his next design project, and the startup SpiNNcloud. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo Marie Curie Fellow at The Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Elisa Donati of the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich talks to Dr. Sunny Bains about neuromorphic circuits for prosthetics, drug delivery and more. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Fortiss research institute in Munich, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

In this episode, Dr. Sunny Bains discusses neuromorphic chips with Dr. Amirreza Yousefzadeh, who has most recently worked at imec and the University of Twente. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Fortiss research institute in Munich, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Join us in lasteset episode of EETimes Current as we delve into the transformative potential of 1.6 Terabit Ethernet (1.6TbE) alongside the pivotal role played by advanced 224G SerDes and emerging linear optical interfaces. Discover how this convergence optimizes area, power, and latency, enabling efficient processing of large language models and unstructured data with memory pooling and cache coherence. From mitigating datapath bottlenecks to unlocking new frontiers in compute throughput, we dissect the significance of next generation electro optical interfaces with 1.6T Ethernet in shaping the future of computing infrastructures.

In this episode, Professor Shih-Chii Liu, co-director of the Sensors Group at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI)—part of both the ETH and the University of Zurich, Switzerland—talks to Brains and Machines host, Dr. Sunny Bains, about neuromorphic cochlea, sparsity and deep networks, and what it will take for the technology to solve real problems in industry. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Fortiss research institute in Munich, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

In this episode, Professor Emre Neftci, director of the Neuromorphic Software Ecosystems group at the Peter Grünberg Institute, talks to Brains and Machines host, Dr. Sunny Bains. He and his PGI colleagues, part of the Jülich Research Centre in Germany, think about how neurons can be trained and organized to learn in an efficient and brain-inspired way. You'll hear about his work in making backpropagation compatible with spiking neural networks, dealing with device variability, and one- and few-shot learning.

In this episode of Brains and Machines, you'll hear Dr. Chiara Bartolozzi talk about how neuromorphic technology can be used to implement attention mechanisms, the importance of embodiment, and why we need a solid theory of how neural systems can work together to create intelligence. 

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Dr. Tobi Delbrück, one of the original neuromorphic engineers from Carver Mead's team at Caltech. Now a professor at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich, he has spent his career developing neuromorphic cameras and other technology. In this interview, you'll find out how he got started in the field, his work developing the dynamic vision sensor (also known as an event camera) and the pros and cons of sparse representations.

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains gets deep into nanoscale ferroelectrics with Professor Beatriz Noheda, director of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center (CogniGron). They discuss how this unusual interdisciplinary research center works, why nanoscale ferroelectrics may be useful in brain-like systems, and a little about how they are designed and fabricated.

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology interviews her IIT colleague, Dr. Simeon Bamford, who is currently working on tactile neuromorphic sensors. They talk about creating circuits to perform functions lost to brain damage, Bamford's involvement with the commercialization of dynamic vision sensors, and his latest research on robotic touch. Discussion follows with Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London, and Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Our future environment depends on renewable and sustainable energy. To maximize sustainable energy sources, energy gathering and grid integration are essential. Silicon carbide (SiC) makes green energy systems more efficient and resilient. To ensure high-quality goods and system design flexibility, end-to-end vertical integration is necessary. In this podcast with Simon Keeton, executive vice president and general manager of the power solutions group at onsemi, we analyze the pivotal role that SiC solutions play in optimizing energy harvesting and efficient grid integration for sustainable energy sources. We will also introduce the next PowerUP Energy Virtual Conference, coming on Dec. 12 and 13.

In the latest episode of Brains and Machines, EE Times regular Dr. Sunny Bains talks to Professor Melika Payvand, who designs neural systems from the circuit-level up at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. You'll find out the role that memristors are playing in the systems she designs, why neural circuits need to operate at different timescales, and why copying some features of biological dendrites could add computational power to silicon brains. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

In this latest episode of Brains and Machines, EE Times regular Dr. Sunny Bains talks to now Emeritus Professor Steve Furber as he prepares to leave the University of Manchester. They talk about associative memories, the original SpiNNaker neural simulator designed using densely-interconnected ARM cores, and the new generation of the technology currently being assembled. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

In Part 2 our conversation with Power Integrations' Peter Vaughan, we'll take a more in-depth look at the technology that is already available for electric vehicles (EVs) as well as the path that lies ahead. The last time, we covered every aspect of the history of the electric car, which led us naturally to the present day and the introduction of the brand name Tesla, which has had a major impact on the competitive landscape of EVs. However, what are some other names that are contributing to innovation? In today's episode of EE Times Current, we will learn more about the cutting-edge technology that goes into electric vehicles.

In this episode of EE Times Current, we take you on an electrifying trip through the history of electric vehicles. These silent, emission-free technological wonders were the forerunners of clean, green transportation in a world dominated by gasoline-powered automobiles. Power Integrations' Peter Vaughan will guide us through the past, present, and future of electric vehicles powering technology.

In this episode of EE Times Current, Dr. Giulia D'Angelo talks to Professor Guillermo Gallego, from the Technical University of Berlin. They discuss the application of the new generation of bio-inspired event-driven cameras and their algorithms to extract cues of motion, depth and optical flow estimation. After that, Giulia discusses the interview with Dr. Sunny Bains from the University College London and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

Join us for the latest episode of our EE Times Current podcast, where we delve into the fascinating world of AI and Connectivity at the Edge solutions.Kaushal Vora and Mo Dogar from Renesas are our special guests for this episode. Together, we'll discuss the crucial hardware and software components required to realize this cutting-edge technology. Join us as we unravel the complex challenge of how these components seamlessly fit together and stay tuned as we explore real use cases such as computer vision, real-time analytics, and so much more.

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Dr Yulia Sandamirskaya, who has just created the Neuromorphic Computing Group at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. We discuss the role that dynamical systems theory plays in robotics, her work at with Intel's Loihi platform, and what she plans to do in her new position at ZHAW, particularly related to vision. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Professor Giacomo Indiveri, from the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. They talk about building biologically-plausible neural circuits in silicon, the trade-offs involved in using analog and digital circuits, and how the technology has been translated into startups. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Dr Mitra Hartmann, Professor of both Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, and head of their sensory and neural engineering group. They discuss the ways in which modelling animal perceptual systems—in her case, the rat—can make us better at both understanding the brain and building technology. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

In today's podcast, we hear from embedded.com editor in chief Nitin Dahad who attended the Industry 4.0 Summit in Porto, Portugal, interviewing executives handling manufacturing, operations and IT at Lam Research, Micron and Wolfspeed.

In this episode of Brains and Machines, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Elisabetta Chicca, head of the bio-inspired Circuits and Systems research group at the University of Groningen, about building neural chips with memristors, adding electronic brains to neural robots, some of the current difficulties with learning algorithms for spiking systems and more. Discussion follows with Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

In this first episode of the new Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains interviews André van Schaik from the Western Sydney University about how neuromorphic engineering has changed since the early 90s, a new project to help simulate neural and neuromorphic models, and more. Discussion follows with Giulia D'Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

Today's episode, hosted by editor in chief Brett Brune, is first in a series of podcasts and articles on Diversity and Belonging in Electronics Engineering. You'll hear from Electro Soft CEO Karla Trotman, on reaching the top.

EE Times has just released the 23rd edition of the Silicon 100, our annual list of electronics and semiconductor startups to watch. In this podcast with Embedded.com editor in chief Nitin Dahad, technology journalist Peter Clarke analyzes the current dynamics of the global startup ecosystem and discusses emerging technology trends.

Join us as we hear from Brett Brune, editor in chief of EETimes.com, and Barbara Jorgenson, editor in chief of EPSNews.com, about the exciting developments this report covers and what it means for the future of smart manufacturing.

Being a power engineer is like being a soccer goalie: no one notices you unless you fail and let one in. And if you're controlling enough power, EVERYONE will notice because failure is typically accompanied by a startling bang and a cloud of smoke. Wide Bandgap technology, and GaN in particular, is relatively new, so how can a responsible engineer be convinced that the technology is ready for prime time and avoid an own-goal, particularly in application spaces where lives or big bags of money are riding on uninterrupted operation?Our guest today is Doug Bailey, VP of Marketing and Applications Engineering at Power Integrations. Mr. Bailey joined Power Integrations in 2004. Prior to joining PI, Mr. Bailey worked in a number of semiconductor marketing roles in Silicon Valley, and in the distant past, designed DSP and image processing ICs.

In this podcast, Nitin Dahad, editor in chief of Embedded.com, talks to Maryam Rofougaran, CEO and co-founder of Movandi, about 5G mmWave in terms of trends, opportunities and challenges for deployment, and what progress she expects over the next 18 months or so.

Join us as we hear from Brett Brune, editor in chief of EETimes.com, and Gina Roos, editor in chief of ElectronicProducts.com, about the exciting developments this report covers and what it means for the future of RF/Wireless technology.

In this podcast, we talk to Silicon Catalyst and Arm on how their Global Silicon Startups contest offers opportunity for accelerating growth.

ue to today's connected world, a high volume of valuable data, susceptible to tampering and physical attacks, is processed, stored, and moved between devices, cars, and data centers. With each connected device comes more data to process and ultimately secure through various interfaces and systems to the cloud. Security is on center stage in the semiconductor industry, and all interfaces and data that move across them need to be secure. Even if all the base-level protocols and standards are met, designers must ensure that the entire SoC is protected. Additionally, as technology evolves (such as quantum computing), so do the threats and ways to attack systems, requiring increasingly reliable, resilient security solutions across the board that will be needed worldwide. Synopsys considers security an integral part of design architecture, not an afterthought.In this podcast, we will discuss the fundamentals of securing interfaces and how Synopsys' Secure Interfaces allows designers to quickly implement the highest levels of security in their SoCs on every link while complying with the latest standards requirements, with low risk and quick time-to-market.

Power electronics must improve efficiency to meet international standards and reduce power waste, making in this way products more sustainable. From mobile phone chargers to industrial SMPS, all AC-powered applications need power supplies. Cambridge startup Pulsiv emerged with their power electronics technology. In this podcast episode featuring Darrel Kingham, Chief Executive Officer of Pulsiv, we will analyze how Pulsiv is reaching this market goal with a patent solution.

Today's feature interview is with Gordon Cooper, Product Manager for AI and neural network processor IP at Synopsys. We cover the differences between Generative AI and object detection AI, as well as compared Generative AI to embedded AI. We'll discuss ChatGPT, a transformer AI model, and explain its ability to identify patterns within large datasets. We will also discuss the challenges of implementing transformers in embedded spaces, along with the different areas where AI is being implemented in volume applications