In this episode of Chalk Talk, Jonathan Dodge from UnitedSiC (now part of Qorvo) and Amelia Dalton discuss how you can take full advantage of silicon carbide JFET transistors. They delve into the details of these innovative transistors including what their capacitances look like, how you can control their speed and how you can combine the benefits of a cascode and a directly driven JFET in your next design.

Effective battery management for electric vehicles is a critical design element faced by engineers today. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Marco Castellanos from Infineon about the key functions of battery management for electric vehicles, the role that cell balancing, voltage measurement and temperature measurement play in battery management ICs, and how wireless battery management using bluetooth low energy can help you tackle a variety of battery management challenges for your next design.

Measuring indoor air pollution is a valuable tool to monitor our health and productivity. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Timothy Kennedy from Sensirion discuss the what, how, and why of indoor air quality testing and how the all in one air quality sensor called Sen5X from Sensirion can make measuring our indoor air quality easier than ever before.

Solar cell technology is more popular than ever before, but we have only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to new applications for photovoltaic cell technology. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Chris Burket from TDK about the basics of photovoltaic cells, what sets TDK’s a-SI film solar cells away from other solar cell technology on the market today and the cool new applications that can take advantage of this powerful technology.

Today’s complex automotive designs require a wide range of motor control and system ICs to deliver the features that customers demand. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Michael Williams from Infineon joins me to explore how Infineon’s MOTIX™ motor control solutions can help simplify your next automotive design. We take a closer look at the MOTIX™ Embedded power system on chip for motor control, the benefits that the MOTIX™ Embedded Power IC can bring to your next design, and how you can get started with your next motor control design with Infineon’s MOTIX™ motor control solutions.

At the heart of our growing IoT ecosystem are high performance semiconductors, but integrated circuits alone cannot make a successful IoT system. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Peter Blais from KEMET and Ryan Wenzelman from Pulse about how passive components are crucial to the development of successful IoT frameworks. They take a closer look at RF, wired and power distribution aspects of IoT system development and investigate how YAGEO Group is advancing innovation in the world of IoT with a wide selection of passive components.

As the demand for higher and higher speed connectivity increases, we need to look at our interconnect solutions to help solve the design requirements inherent with these kinds of designs. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Matthew Burns from Samtec discuss how Samtec’s Flyover technology is helping solve our high speed connectivity needs. They take closer look at how Samtec’s Flyover technology helps solve the issue with PCB reach, the details of FLYOVER® QSFP SYSTEM, and how this cost effective, high–performance and heat efficient can help you with the challenges of your 56 Gbps bandwidths and beyond design.

The future electrification of the world’s transportation industry depends on the infrastructure we create today. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Sven Lerche from Würth Elektronik about the electronic challenges and solutions for today’s e-mobility designs and EV charging stations. They take a closer look at the trends in these kinds of designs, the role that electronic parts play in terms of robustness, and how Würth’s REDCUBE can help you with your next electric vehicle or EV charging station design.

If you are working on a telecom, consumer or industrial design, current sense resistors can give you a great way to detect and convert current to voltage. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Clinton Stiffler from Vishay about the what, where and how of Vishay’s WFC and WFCP current sense resistors. They investigate how these current sense resistors are constructed, how the flip-chip design of these current sense resistors reduces TCR compared to other chip resistors, and how you can get started using a Vishay current sense resistor in your next design.

If you're designing IEC61131 compliant digital outputs for these PLCs or industrial controllers, you need to have a plan to protect these outputs from a variety of unknowns. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Asa Kirby from Skyworks about an innovative new isolated smart switch device from Skyworks that gives you an unprecedented level of channel flexibility and protection, letting you offer customers a truly “set it and forget it” solution when it comes to your next PLC design.

Climate change is making better energy storage more important than ever before. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Dr. Rüdiger Meyer from Phoenix Contact joins me to discuss the what, where and how of energy storage systems. We take a closer look at the structure and components included in typical energy storage systems and the role that connectors play in successful energy storage systems.

Long gone are the days of mechanical buttons and knobs in our home appliances. Today’s modern appliances require a variety of different modes, voltages, and motors. Keeping all of those considerations in mind, energy efficiency must reign supreme. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Silvestro Fimaini from Power Integrations about how you can improve the efficiency of your appliance and smart home design power supplies with Power Integrations InnoSwitch3 with FluxLink and PowiGAN.

Power monitors can be very effective in terms of power management for a variety of designs and the use of a multichannel power monitors can not only lower your overall system power but also lower your code overhead, simplify prototyping and event detection. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mitch Polonsky from Microchip about the benefits of multichannel power monitors and how Microchip’s PAC194x and PAC195x can help you monitor your power in your next design.

The challenges for 3D IC design are greater than standard chip design - but they are not insurmountable. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Vinay Patwardhan from Cadence Design Systems about the variety of challenges faced by 3D IC designers today and how Cadence’s integrated, high-capacity Integrity 3D IC Platform, with its 3D design planning and implementation cockpit, flow manager and co-design capabilities will not only help you with your next 3D IC design.

With increasing design sizes, complexity of advanced nodes, and faster time to market requirements - design teams are looking for scalability, simplicity, flexibility and agility. In today’s Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mahesh Turaga about the details of Cadence’s end to end cloud portfolio, how you can extend your on-prem environment with the push of a button with Cadence’s new hybrid cloud and Cadence’s Cloud solutions you can help you from design creation to systems design and more.

Today’s AI and Networking applications are driving an exponential increase in compute power. When it comes to scaling power for these kinds of applications with next generation chipsets, we need to keep in mind package size constraints, dynamic current balancing, and output capacitance. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Mark Rodrigues from Infineon joins Amelia Dalton to discuss the system design challenges with increasing power density for next generation chipsets, the benefits that phase paralleling brings to the table, and why Infineon’s best in class transient performance with XDP architecture and Trans Inductor Voltage Regulator can help power  your next high performance ASIC, SoC or xPU design.

Data rates are getting faster with each passing year. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Matthew Burns from Samtec to separate fact from fiction when it comes to 224 Gbps data rates. They take a closer look at the design challenges, the tradeoffs, and architectural decisions that we will need to consider when designing a 224 Gbps design. They also investigate the variety of interconnect solutions that Samtec offers for your next 224 Gbps design.

Power inductor technology has made a huge difference in the evolution of our electronic system designs. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Tim Shafer from Vishay about the history of power inductor technology, how Vishay developed the most compact and efficient power inductor on the market today and why Vishay’s extensive portfolio of composite power inductors might be the best solution for your next embedded system design.

Trends in today’s embedded computing designs including smart sensors, autonomous vehicles, and edge computing are making embedded computing industry standards more important than ever before. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Matthew Burns from Samtec about how standards organizations like PC104, PICMG and VITA s are encouraging innovation in today’s embedded designs, how Samtec supports each one of these standards organizations and how you can utilize Samtec’s high performance interconnects for your next small-form factor embedded computing designs.

For today’s networking, telecom, server, and enterprise storage applications, power efficiency and power density are crucial components to the success of their power management. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Dr. Davood Yazdani from Infineon chat about the details of Infineon’s ultra-efficient integrated point of load voltage regulators. Davood and Amelia take a closer look at the operation of these integrated point of load voltage regulators and why using the Infineon OptiMOS 5 FETs combined with the Infineon Fast Constant On Time controller engine make them a great solution for your next design.

If you are working on an FPGA design, the choice of a connector solution can be a crucial element in your system design. Your FPGA connector solution needs to support the highest of speeds, small form factors, and emerging architectures. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton joins Matthew Burns to chat about you can get 56 Gbps PAM4 performance in your next FPGA application. We take a closer look at Samtec’s AcceleRate® HD High-Density Arrays, the details of Samtec’s Flyover Technology, and why Samtec’s complete portfolio of high-performance interconnects are a perfect fit for 56 Gbps PAM4 FPGA Applications.

No longer are hierarchical communication models effective in this new era of Industry 4.0. We need to look at an independent communication model that includes a single network with industrial ethernet at its core. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Peter Swift about Amphenol’s SPE and iX Industrial family of connectors. They take a closer look at the details of these connector solutions and investigate why they are a great fit for the next generation of industrial automation applications.

In order to keep up with the rigorous pace of today’s electronic designs, we must have visibility into each step of our IC design lifecycle including debug, bring up and in-field operation. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Steve Pateras from Synopsys about in-field infrastructure for silicon lifecycle management, the role that edge analytics play when it comes to in-field optimization, and how cloud analytics, runtime agents and SiliconMAX sensor analytics can provide you more information than ever before for the lifecycle of your IC design.

Temperature sensing has come a very long way in recent years. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Doug Gates from Melexis about the latest innovation in medical grade temperature sensing. They take a closer look at the different kinds of applications that can use this kind of sensing technology, the role that emissivity and field view play in temperature sensing, and what sets the Melexis’ MLX90632 apart from other temperature sending solutions on the market today. 

There has been a lot of innovation in the world of automotive designs over the last several years and this innovation also includes the LED lights at the rear of our vehicles. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Nick Ikuta from ROHM Semiconductor about ROHM’s automotive LED driver ICs. They take a closer look at why their four channel outputs, energy sharing function, and integrated protection functions make these new driver ICs a great solution for rear lamp design.

Not sure what current sense amplifiers are and why you would need them? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Seema Venkatesh from Analog Devices about the what, why, and how of current sense amplifiers. They take a closer look at why these high precision current sense amplifiers can be a critical addition to your system and how the MAX40080 current sense amplifiers can solve a variety of design challenges in your next design. 

Nowhere is the need for the reduction of board space more important than in the realm of high-performance servers. One way we can reduce complexity and reduce overall board space in our server designs can be found in the connector solutions we choose. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with David Einhorn from Amphenol about how Amphenol double-density cool edge interconnects can not only reduce space but also lessen complexity and give us greater flexibility.

With the sheer amount of automotive software cost and complexity today, we need a way to maximize software reuse across our process platforms. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Daniel Balser from NXP take a closer look at the software ecosystem for NXP’s S32K3 MCU. They investigate how real-time drivers, a comprehensive safety software platform, and high performance security system will help you tackle the cost and complexity of automotive software development.

Industry 4.0 with its variety of sensing solutions and fieldbus systems can make communication pretty tricky but single pair ethernet can change all of that. In this episode of Chalk, Amelia Dalton chats with representatives from three different companies: Analog Devices, HARTING and Würth Elektronik to discuss the benefits of single pair Ethernet, what the new IEEE standard means to SPE designs, and what you should consider when working on your next single pair Ethernet design.

Today sensor technology has become integral to our everyday lives. And in the future, sensor technology will mean even more than it does today. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with David Jones from Infineon about the future of sensor technologies and how they are going to impact our lives in the post-pandemic world. They investigate how miniaturization, built-in antennas in-package and the evolution of radar technology have helped usher in a whole new era of sensing technologies and how all of this and more will help us live healthier and happier lives.

Wide band gap materials such as silicon carbide are revolutionizing the power industry. At the same time, they can also introduce byproducts including overheating, short circuits and over voltage. The question remains: how can we use silicon carbide without those headache-inducing side effects? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Rob Weber from Microchip about Microchip’s patented augmented switching technology can make those silicon carbide side effects a thing of the past while reducing our switching losses up to 50% and accelerating our time to market as well.

If you are designing a robot, a drive system, or any electromechanical system, the dynamic series of connectors from TE Connectivity might be a great solution for your next design. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Jennifer Love from TE Connectivity about the design requirements common in robotic applications and why this new flexible connector with its innovative three point contact design, audible locking system, and dedicated tooling make it a great solution for all kinds of robotic designs.

Can you design a machine learning application without a deep knowledge in machine learning? Yes, you can! In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Yann Le Faou from Microchip about a machine learning approach that is low power, includes an expertise in communication and security, and is easy to implement.

There are many ways that machine learning can help improve our IC designs, but when it comes to quality of results and design iteration - it’s a game changer. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Nick Ni from Xilinx about the benefits of machine learning design optimization, what hierarchical module-based compilation brings to the table, and why extending a module design into an end-to-end flow can make all the difference in your next IC design.

Today there is growing demand for energy storage with more power, longer range, and longer run time. But the question remains: how can we increase our energy storage given the energy storage mediums on the market today? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Anthony Huyhn from Analog Devices about the benefits of high voltage energy storage, why stacked battery cells are crucial to these kinds of systems, how high voltage energy storage systems can reduce conduction loss exponentially and what kind of high voltage charging solutions from Analog Devices are on the market today.

Did you know that you can create custom modular connector solutions from off the shelf components that are robust, save PCB space and are easy to assemble? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Phill Shaw and Nazario Biala from HARTING about the Har-Modular PCB connector system that gives you over a billion combination possibilities for data, signal and power.

If you are working on a mission-critical design, there is a very important list of requirements that you will need to consider for your electromechanical controls including how well they have been tested, availability of inventory, and the quality of the components. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with John Saathoff from Littelfuse electromechanical solutions offered by Hartland Controls, the benefits Hartland brings to the table when it comes to mission-critical designs, and how you can get started using Hartland Controls for your next design.

IC design has come a very long way in a short amount of time. Today, our SoC designs frequently include integrated analog, 100+ Gigabit data rates and 3D stacked DRAM integrated into our SoCs on interposers. In order to keep our heads above water in all of this IC complexity, we need a unified circuit simulation workflow and a fast signoff SPICE and FastSPICE architecture. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Hany Elhak from Synopsys about how the unified workflow of the PrimeSim Continuum from Synopsys can help you address systematic and scale complexity for your next IC design.

Multicore processing is more popular than ever before but how do we take advantage of this new kind of processing? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Jeff Hancock from Siemens and Amelia Dalton investigate the challenges inherent in multicore processing, the benefits of hypervisors and multicore frameworks, and what you need to consider when choosing your next multicore processing solution.

When it comes to our always-on, critical systems we need to carefully consider power protection and maintainability. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Dwight Larson investigate the issues that surround hot-plugging into an energized power supply, the best solutions to consider, what the different hot-swap circuit topologies look like for a variety of applications and why the MAX15090B/C with its innovative current foldback startup may be the best solution for your next design.

New applications and technology are driving demand for even more compute and functionality in the devices we use every day. System on chip (SoC) designs are quickly migrating to new process nodes, and rapidly growing in size and complexity. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Rod Metcalfe about how machine learning combined with distributed computing offers new capabilities to automate and scale RTL to GDS chip implementation flows, enabling design teams to support more, and increasingly complex, SoC projects.

The advantages and benefits of fiber optics are a mile long…but how can you design with them? How can you clean them? How do you repair them? Need a bit of a refresher? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with David Kuklinski from Neutrik about the OpticalCon advanced, OpticalCon LITE and Opticalcon DragonFly fiber optic solutions from Neutrik. They take a closer look at what benefits each of these solutions brings to the table, what kind of configurations are offered with each of these fiber optic solutions and what kind of performance you can expect when using them in your next design.

In order to keep up with the breakneck speed of today’s innovation in Industry 4.0, we need an efficient way to connect a wide variety of edge nodes to the cloud without breaks in our communication networks, and with shorter latency, lower power, and longer reach. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Fiona Treacy from Analog Devices about the benefits of seamless ethernet and how seamless ethernet’s twisted single pair design, long reach and power and data over one cable can solve your industrial connectivity woes.

Safety, EMC compliance, your project schedule, and your BOM cost are all important factors when you are considering what power supply you will need for your next design. You also need to think about form factor, which capacitor will work best, and more. But if you’re not a power supply expert, this can get overwhelming in a hurry. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Ron Stull from CUI Inc. about CUI PBO Single Output Board Mount AC-DC Power Supplies, what this ac/dc core brings to the table in terms of form factor, reliability and performance, and why this kind of solution may give you the flexibility you need to optimize your next design.

Dual Core microcontrollers can bring a lot of benefits to today’s modern embedded designs in order to keep all of our design requirements in balance. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Patrick Kennedy from NXP about why newer design requirements for today’s connected embedded systems are making this balancing act even harder than ever before and how the i.MX RT1170 can help solve these problems with its heterogeneous dual cores, MIPI interface, multi-core low power strategy and SRAM PUF technology can make all the difference in your next embedded design.

In the realm of automotive designs, safety must reign above all else. But the question remains: How can we innovate within the constraints of today’s safety standards? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Rob Bates from Siemens about the role ISO 26262 plays when it comes to COTS and open source software, what certified software components are all about, and how heterogeneous multiprocessing can be helpful in your next automotive design.

If you are working on a low-power IoT design, you are going to face power issues that can get quite complicated. Addressing these issues earlier in your design process can save you a lot of time, effort, and frustration. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Kristian Sæther from Nordic Semiconductor about the details of the new Nordic Power Profiler Kit II - including how it can measure actual current, help you configure the right design settings, and show you a visualized power profile for your next design.

Today, your circuit protection device needs to be versatile, handling a wide range of conditions with long-life low capacitance, low leakage, and state-of-the-art energy handling density. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Paul Smith from Bourns about IsoMOV - a new integrated circuit protection that brings together the most important circuit protection capabilities in one efficient package.

Today’s video applications require enormous amounts of compute performance on small power budgets. And, the wide variety of specifications, rates, and resolutions makes flexibility a key design requirement. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Omi Oliyide of Intel about how Intel FPGAs are ideal to take on even the most challenging video and vision designs, and explain how you can get started with this exciting technology in your next project.

Making sure your motor control design is efficient and ready for primetime can be a complicated process. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Alan Li from Toshiba about the basics of brushless motor control, more advanced variables including lead angle control and intelligent phase control and most importantly, how you can simplify your next brushless motor control design.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air can be a key indicator in indoor air quality and improving our indoor air quality can have a slew of benefits including increased energy efficiency, increased cognitive performance, and also the reduction of the risk for viral infection. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Bernd Zimmermann from Sensirion about the reasons for measuring carbon dioxide in our indoor spaces, what this kind of measurement looks like, and why Sensirion’s new SCD4 carbon dioxide sensors are breaking new ground in this arena. (edited)