EETimes On Air

This week’s podcast: Colin Barnden, an analyst and a regular contributor to EE Times, recently came to an intriguing supposition: car makers are likely to give up their factories, just like most semiconductor manufacturers gave up their fabs. This week Junko and I talk with Colin about his rather startling prediction.

This week’s podcast: The biggest technology companies in the world have been reshaping business, society, and culture – and they’re facing mounting opposition to what they’re doing. A conversation with Robin Gaster, author of the book “Behemoth: Amazon Rising.” Also: the way we’ve been listening to music lately, there’s been little emphasis on audio quality. Qualcomm is seeking to change that with high-def audio technology and what it hopes will be an extensive ecosystem of partners.

This week’s podcast: Nvidia’s proposal to buy Arm is one of the most consequential acquisitions in technology history. Opposition is said to be mounting, but will those opposed put up enough resistance to scuttle the deal? This week, a discussion with industry analyst Mike Feibus about the perils of the merger, and the perils of opposing it.

This week’s podcast: There is only one inherently electronic instrument in common use. In this episode, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the theremin, we talk about the history of the instrument, how it works, and how to play it, with Cyril Lance, CTO of Moog Music, which makes theremins, and with musician Jonathan Segel from the band Camper Van Beethoven.

This week’s podcast: Automakers are beginning to introduce more safety features that can temporarily take over for drivers, and gradually more and more vehicles will be able to drive themselves. However, there’s little clarity for drivers what each feature actually does, when, and under what circumstances. When it isn’t clear who’s responsible – the driver or the car – that’s called “mode confusion.” It’s well known to military aviators, but to hardly anyone else. We talk with former Navy fighter pilot, engineer, and autonomous systems expert Missy Cummings about the risks to motorists if automakers fail to plan for mode confusion.

This week’s podcast: AI is beginning to pervade a boggling array of electronic products. We’ll have a discussion with Geoff Tate, the co-founder and CEO of AI specialist Flex Logix on designing with artificial intelligence. Also, one of the big trends in the electronics industry is the development of open technologies. What do we mean by open technology, and why is it becoming such a big deal now? A discussion with industry analyst Kevin Krewell.

This week’s podcast: Cars have always been mostly mechanical systems; but they’re on their way to becoming mostly electronic systems. Junko interviews Qualcomm SVP Nakul Duggal on the future of electronics in the automotive industry.

This week’s podcast: We feature a conversation with Lars Reger, CTO of NXP about how companies have adapted to managing workers in this new work-at-home era. Intel just hired prodigal son Pat Gelsinger as CEO, and Intel watchers are excited. We’ll talk about Intel’s prospects with Jim McGregor, principal analyst with Tirias Research. Also, a chat with Arm’s Chet Babla about the automotive industry, a hot new market for electronics.

This week’s podcast: Even when virtualized and down-sized, the Consumer Electronics Show is too vast for anyone one person to get through alone. Relying on coverage from EE Times and our full network of sister publications, we take you on a tour of the big surprises, the innovations, the letdowns and a bit of the weirdness of CES 2021.

This week’s podcast: Like so many others, we’re happy to put 2020 behind us, but the past informs the future. We poll our panel of experts on what the world can expect out of the electronics industry in 2021. It’s our Predictions Podcast.

This week’s podcast: The electronics industry is approaching the limits of two fundamental physical barriers, Moore’s Law and Shannon’s Limit. That has some interesting ramifications for nearly every stretch of the global datacommunications network, from undersea cables linking to data centers.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: This week, our podcast is a holiday greeting from EE Times editors around the world — and our families — to you. No matter which holiday you celebrate, sacred or secular, December has become a global gift-giving season. What we want, and our wishes to you, ranging from electronics, to unexpected requests, to good measures of peace, and healing, and joy.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: The capacitive touchscreen was a major leap in HMI, but NextInput is offering further steps: force sensing and gesture. A talk with NextInput CEO Ali Foughi. Also, when we invoke the IoT, we tend to focus on the “things” even though the prerequisite is the “Internet” half of the equation. A discussion on how wireless LANs are enabling some of the biggest IoT applications to date.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: Xilinx's Gen 3 RFSoC is aimed at inherently finicky RF applications like 5G and radar; Pentek founder Roger Hosking talks with us about getting the most performance out of this family of FPGAs. Also, Qualcomm revealed its latest Snapdragon, certain to be heading for hundreds of millions of 5G handsets in China and around the world; a discussion with analyst Jim McGregor about the auspiciously designated 888 (triple fortune in China).

The automotive industry was once so wrapped up in fully autonomous driving that it still hasn’t quite figured out what should be doing today now that full autonomy has been pushed back. The near-term focus has shifted to assisted driving (or ADAS), but one industry expert thinks ADAS won’t work nearly as well as it could unless it is paired with driver monitoring systems. This week, a conversation with the opinionated and persuasive Colin Barnden.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: The wearables category is one of the hottest new markets in electronics; we talk with Jérôme Mouly, an analyst with Yole Développement about how the market is going to get hotter. Also, a report from the Double Summits in Shenzhen. The CEO Summit brings some of the top industry leaders from around the world, while the Distribution Summit provides insights into the unglamorous but absolutely critical business of maintaining global supply chains.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: The U.S. election dragged on far longer than usual, in part to count mail-in ballots, and in part because of the controversy regarding mail-in voting. This week we talk with the company that safeguards mail-in ballots with AI-based signature verification technology, and also with a policy expert about the ramifications of using that technology.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: It is almost impossible to create a modern product in a reasonable amount of time without models of hardware, or models of software, or – increasingly – models of both before anything is actually built or coded. How that works in practice is one of the marvels of modern engineering. A discussion with Altair SVP Pete Darnell. Also, Leti in France just began collaborating with Intel on advanced chip packaging. A discussion with EE Times newest contributor, Don Scansen.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: AMD is buying Xilinx for $35B. Does the deal make sense? A chat with Tirias Research analyst Kevin Krewell. Also, a discussion with execs from IBM and Synopsys on their ambitious plans to create an entire ecosystem for artificial intelligence research. With IBM Research VP Mukesh Khare and Synopsys VP Arun Venkatachar.

The Weekly Briefing podcast: It is the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the word “robot.” This week, a free-wheeling conversation with science fiction author Mark Niemann-Ross about robots, fictional and real. Also, EE Times has just published a book that we’re rather proud of. Called “Sensors in Automotive.” We talk about that.