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)

Condition based monitoring (CBM) has been a valuable tool for industrial applications for years but until now, the adoption of this kind of technology has not been very widespread. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Maurice O’Brien from Analog Devices about how CBM can now be utilized across a wider variety of industrial applications and how Analog Device’s portfolio of CBM solutions can help you avoid unplanned downtime in your next industrial design.

Rugged and reliable designs today have a specific set of design requirements that may not be found in other industries including robustness, durability, and the ability to resist harsh environments. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mark Dickson from TE Connectivity about the KISSLING product family which includes a wide variety of rugged and reliable solutions for your next design.

Power over Ethernet has come a long way since its initial creation way back in 1997. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Alan Jay Zwiren from Microchip about the past, present, and future of power over ethernet including details of how a PoE system works, why midspans are crucial for power over ethernet connectivity and why Microchip can be your one stop shop for your next PoE design needs.

IoT Security certification schemes can be complex, but security identities and security certification inheritance can make this aspect of your IoT design quite a bit easier. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mike Dow from Silicon Labs about the current state of global security regulations, the difference between physical and logical attacks, and how Silicon Labs SoCs and modules can help you solve the security demands of your next design.

In many ways, Industry 4.0 is encouraging innovation in the arena of brushless motor design. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with CJ Waters of ON Semiconductor about the components involved in brushless motor design and how new applications like collaborative robots can take advantage of the benefits of BLDCs.

Connectivity is going to play a vital role in the future of connected and autonomous vehicles. One of the keys to the success of our future automotive designs will be the incorporation of service-oriented gateways. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Brian Carlson from NXP about the role that service-oriented gateways will play in the future of connected and autonomous vehicles and the details of NXP’s new S32G2 vehicle network processors that are going to make all of this possible.

As our devices get smarter, our communication needs get more complex. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Marc Hervieu from STMicroelectronics joins me to discuss the various topologies present in today’s wireless connectivity, and how the innovative architecture and flexible use of resources of the STMicroelectronics STM32WB microcontroller can help you with your wireless connectivity concerns in your next embedded design.

If you are working on a connection or IO constrained design, a one wire solution could be a great way for you to power and operate your I2C or SPI endpoints. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Scott Jones from Maxim Integrated about the DS28E18 communications bridge: a one wire solution that can help you address a variety of system level challenges including protocol conversion, wiring limitations, and communication distance concerns.

Demands on WiFi are growing exponentially, and our aging standards and technology are struggling to keep up. Luckily, WiFi 6 and 6E represent a leap in WiFi capabilities for our systems. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Tony Testa of Qorvo about the ins and outs of WiFi 6 and 6E with their increased speed, capacity, and efficiency.

Vibration sensing is an integral part of today’s connected industrial designs but Bluetooth, WiFi, and Zigbee may not be the best solution for this kind of sensing in an industrial setting. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Andrew Lund about LoRaWAN for vibration sensing. They investigate why LoRaWAN is perfect for industrial vibration sensing, the role that standards play in these kinds of systems, and why 3 axis detection and real-time monitoring can make all the difference in your next industrial design.

Today’s automotive designs are more complicated than ever, with a slew of safety requirements, internal memory considerations, and complicated power issues to consider. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Marcelo Williams Silva from Infineon about the Traveo™ II Microcontrollers that deal with all of these automotive-related challenges with ease. Amelia and Marcelo take a closer look at how the power efficiency, smart IO signal paths, and over the air firmware updates included with this new MCU family will make all the time-saving difference in your next automotive design.

The combination of system-on-module technology with advanced SoCs with programmable logic offer the ultimate in functionality, performance, flexibility, power efficiency, and ease of use. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Karan Kantharia of Xilinx about the new Kira SOM, and how it enables faster time-to-deployment versus conventional component-based design.

May 21, 2021 -- Your next MCU needs to be more than just smart. It needs to be power-efficient, have ample memory, and industrial-grade security. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Zach Metzinger of Maxim Integrated about the latest member of the DARWIN family with a new RISC-V co-processor.

Machine health monitoring is a key benefit in the Industry 4.0 revolution. Integrating data from sensors for vibration detection, motion detection, angle measurement and more can give a remarkably accurate picture of machine health, and timely warning of impending failure. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Alex Chernyakov of ROHM Semiconductor about the key considerations in machine health monitoring, and how a new line of accelerometers for industrial applications can help.

Cloud providers face a variety of challenges with moving data from one place to another. In modern data centers, flexibility is a key consideration - on par with performance. Software-defined hardware acceleration offers a major breakthrough in flexibility. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Kartik Srinivasan of Xilinx about the details of Smart NICs with the new Alveo SN1000 with composable hardware.

Designing cloud-connected applications with FPGAs can be a daunting engineering challenge. But, new platforms promise to simplify the process and make cloud-connected IoT design easier than ever. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Tak Ikushima of Intel about how a collaboration between Microsoft and Intel is pushing innovation forward with a new FPGA Cloud Connectivity Kit.

Modern and future automotive systems will put enormous demands on RF. We need reliable, high-bandwidth, low-latency, secure wireless connections between cars and infrastructure, from car to car, and within systems on each car. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Owen Barthelmes and Kelly Freeman of Amphenol RF to talk about interconnects for these new, challenging automotive RF systems.

Over-voltage protection is an often neglected and misunderstood part of system design. But often, otherwise well-engineered devices are brought down by over-voltage events. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Todd Phillips of Littelfuse about the new IEC 623689-1 standard, what tests are included in the standard, and how the standard allows for greater safety and design flexibility.

There are a bewildering number of choices when designing with an MCU. It can be a challenge to find one with exactly what your design requires - form factor, cost, power consumption, performance, features, and ease-of-use. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Brad Rex of Renesas about the small-but-powerful Renesas RA family - a flexible and scalable collection of MCUs that may be exactly what your next project needs.

Once a design goes to tape-out, the real challenges begin. Teams find themselves drowning in data from design-process-test during production ramp-up, and have to cope with data from numerous sources in different formats in the manufacturing test supply chain. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mark Laird of Synopsys in part three of our series on the Silicon LifeCycle Management (SLM) platform, discussing how Yield Explorer and SiliconDash give valuable insight to engineering and manufacturing teams.

Acceleration is becoming a critical technology for today’s data-intensive world. Conventional processors cannot keep up with the demands of AI and other performance-intensive workloads, and engineering teams are looking to acceleration technologies for leverage against the deluge of data. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Tom Spencer of Achronix about the current revolution in acceleration technology, and about specific solutions from Achronix that take advantage of leading-edge FPGAs, design IP, and even plug-and-play accelerator cards to address a wide range of challenges.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) design brings a new level of demands to the engineering team, particularly in areas like thermal performance, reliability, and scalability. And, packaging has a key role to play. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Joel Boone of Phoenix Contact about challenges and solutions in IIoT design packaging.

In-chip monitoring can significantly alter the lifecycle management landscape. By taking advantage of modern techniques, today’s more complex designs can be optimized even after they are deployed. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Stephen Crosher of Synopsys about silicon lifecycle management and how to take full advantage of the optimization opportunities available for scalability, reliability, and much more.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could keep on analyzing our IC designs once they are in the field? After all, simulation and lab measurements can never tell the whole story of how devices will behave in real-world use. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Randy Fish of Synopsys about gaining better insight into IC designs through the use of embedded monitors and sensors, and how we can enable a range of new optimizations throughout the lifecycle of our designs.

LED lighting is revolutionizing lighting design. Engineers now need to consider a host of issues such as power consumption, spectrum, form factor, and reliability. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Peter Swift from Amphenol ICC about the latest in LED lighting technology, and solutions for indoor and outdoor applications.

Today’s dense, complex designs can be extremely challenging from an EMI perspective. Re-designs of PCBs to eliminate problems can be expensive and time consuming, and a manufacturing solution can be preferable. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Chris Burket of TDX about Flexield noise suppression sheets, which may be just what your design needs to get EMI under control.

For truly high-performance systems, liquid immersion cooling is often the best solution. But, jumping into immersion cooling requires careful consideration of elements such as connectors. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Brian Niehoff of Samtec about connector solutions for immersion-cooled applications.

Physical verification of IC designs at today’s advanced process nodes requires an immense amount of processing power. But, getting your design and verification tools to take full advantage of the compute resources available can be a challenge. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Manoz Palaparthi of Synopsys about dramatically improving the performance of your physical verification process. 

New advances in PCIe demand new connectors, and the challenge of maintaining signal integrity has only gotten tougher. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Matthew Burns of Samtec about why PCIe isn’t just for PCs, what PCIe over fiber looks like, and how Samtec’s team of signal integrity experts can help with your next PCIe design.

Stepper motor control has come a long way in the past few years. New techniques can give greater control, smoother operation, greater torque, and better efficiency. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Lars Jaskulski about Trinamic stepper solutions and how to take advantage of micro stepping, load measurement, and more.

Cabling and connectors for RF design are critical to performance. And, in the world of microwave and millimeter-wave design, choosing the right interconnect for your frequency band is key to signal integrity. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Matthew Burns of Samtec about what you need to know to choose the right interconnect solution for your next RF design.

Single-pair Ethernet is revolutionizing industrial system design, with new levels of performance and simplicity. But, before you make the jump, you need to understand the options for cables, connectors, and other infrastructure. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Lyndsey Walling of Phoenix Contact about the latest in single-pair Ethernet for industrial applications.

Today’s high-speed serial interfaces with PAM4 present serious challenges when it comes to test. Eval boards can end up huge, and signal integrity of the test point system is always a concern. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Matthew Burns of Samtec about the Bullseye test point system, which can maintain signal integrity up to 70 GHz with a compact test point footprint.

When it comes to temperature monitoring and management, industrial applications can be extremely demanding. With temperatures that can range from 270 to 3000 C, consumer-grade temperature probes just don’t cut it. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Ezana Haile of Microchip technology about using thermocouples for temperature monitoring in industrial applications.

December 17, 2020 - IoT design is a complex task, involving numerous disciplines and domains - including embedded design, software, networking, security, manufacturability, and the list goes on and on. Mastering all those moving parts is a daunting challenge for design teams. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Andy Reiter of Digi International about development, deployment, manufacturing, and management tools for IoT development that could help get your next design out the door.

Thunderbolt is the closest thing we’ve got to universal interconnect between a wide variety of devices and systems. With a universal USB-C connector, it can do video, power, data communication - all at scalable rates with smart adjustment. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Sandeep Vedanthi of Intel about the latest in Thunderbolt technology - Thunderbolt 4, which brings a number of benefits over previous versions.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are exciting buzzwords in the world of electronic engineering today. But in order for artificial intelligence or machine learning to get into mainstream edge devices, we need to enable true edge inference. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Kris Ardis from Maxim Integrated about the MAX78000 family of microcontrollers and how this new microcontroller family can help solve our AI inference challenges with low power, low latency, and a built-in neural network accelerator. 

In control applications with strict deterministic requirements, such as those found in automotive and industrial domains, Time Sensitive Networking offers a way to send time-critical traffic over a standard Ethernet infrastructure. This enables the convergence of all traffic classes and multiple applications in one network. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Josh Levine of Intel and Patrick Loschmidt of TTTech about standards, specifications, and capabilities of time-sensitive networking (TSN).

Today’s rapid growth of power and motor control applications demands a fresh look at gate driver technology. Recent advances in gate drivers help designers hit new levels of efficiency and performance in their designs. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mitch Van Ochten of ROHM about the latest in isolated and non-isolated gate driver solutions.

In today’s fast-moving automotive electronics design environment, passive components are often one of the last things engineers consider. But, choosing the right passives is now more important than ever, and there is an exciting and sometimes bewildering range of options to choose from. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Peter Blais from KEMET about choosing the right passives and the right power distribution for your next automotive design.

ESD protection is a critical, and often overlooked design consideration in many of today’s systems. There is a wide variety of solutions available for ESD protection, and choosing the right one for your design can be a daunting and confusing task. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Tom Wolf of Nexperia about choosing the right ESD protection for your next design.

In the new era of connected medical devices, securing embedded systems has become more important than ever. But, there is a lot medical device designers can borrow from current best-practices for embedded security in general. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Robert Bates from Mentor about strategies and challenges for securing modern medical devices and systems.

Recent advances in wide-bandgap materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride are transforming gate driver technology, bringing higher power efficiency and a host of other follow-on benefits. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Suravi Karmacharya of Maxim Integrated about Maxim’s MAX22700-MAX22702 family of single-channel isolated gate drivers.

MCUs continue to evolve based on increasing demands from designers. We expect our microcontrollers to do more than ever - better security, more performance, lower power consumption - and we want it all for less money, of course. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Kris Ardis from Maxim Integrated about the new DARWIN line of low-power MCUs.

Adding cellular connectivity to your IoT design is a complex undertaking, requiring a broad set of engineering skills and expertise. For most teams, this can pose a serious schedule challenge in getting products out the door. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Kristian Sæther of Nordic Semiconductor about the easiest path to IoT cellular connectivity with the Nordic nRF9160 low-power system-in-package solution.

Robotics projects can get complicated quickly, and finding a set of components, controllers, networking, and software that plays nicely together is a real headache. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mark Easley of Texas Instruments about the TI-RSLK Robotics Kit, which will get you up and running on your next robotics project in no time.

The design of HVAC systems poses unique challenges for things like motor control and circuit protection. System performance and reliability are critical, and those come in part from choosing the right components for the job. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Ryan Sheahen of Littelfuse about choosing the right components for your next HVAC design.

With the incredible pace of automotive innovation these days, it’s important to choose the right connectors for the job. With everything from high-speed data to lighting, connectors have a huge impact on reliability, cost, and design. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Glenn Heath from Amphenol ICC about the Minitek MicroSpace line of automotive- and industrial-grade connectors.

Developing embedded software, and particularly configuring your embedded system can be a major pain for development engineers. Getting all the drivers, middleware, and libraries you need set up and in the right place and working is a constant source of frustration. In this episode of Chak Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Brett Novak of Microchip about Microchip’s MPLAB Harmony 3, with the MPLAB Harmony Configurator - an embedded development framework with a drag-and-drop GUI that makes configuration a snap.

While technologies like GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth all offer various types of location services, none of them are well-suited to providing accurate, indoor/outdoor, low-power, real-time, 3D location data for edge and endpoint devices. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mickael Viot from Qorvo about ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, and how it can revolutionize a wide range of applications.

FPGA SoCs can solve numerous problems for IoT designers. Now, with the growing momentum behind RISC-V, there are FPGA SoCs that feature RISC-V cores as well as low-power, high-security, and high-reliability. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with KK from Microchip Technology about the new PolarFire SoC family that is ideal for demanding IoT endpoint applications.

Converting from distribution-friendly voltages like 400V down to locally-useful voltages can be a tough engineering challenge. In SELV systems, many teams turn to BCM converter modules because of their efficiency, form factor, and ease of design-in. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Ian Masza of Vicor about transforming 400V into power for SELV systems.

Today’s 4K and emerging 8K video standards require an enormous amount of bandwidth. And, with all that bandwidth, there are new demands on our interconnects. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Mike Comer and Ron Orban of Amphenol RF about the evolution of broadcast technology and the latest interconnect solutions that are required to meet these new demands.