EE Times Current

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: In the last five years, the number of commercial companies looking to exploit nuclear fusion has doubled and investments in those companies have skyrocketed. Why now, after decades of minimal progress? Our guest is Melanie Windridge, plasma physicist and the author of a recent report that surveys the fusion industry.

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: We’re going to just space out on this edition of the Weekly Briefing podcast: The US is on the verge of two significant launches, one a project to establish the viability of using lasers instead of radio waves for space communications, the other one of the most powerful scientific instruments ever devised, the James Webb Space Telescope. With veteran aerospace editor George Leopold.  

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: Exactly 50 years ago, one of the most significant products in electronics history was introduced: the microprocessor. It was inevitable that someone would invent one. It was hardly inevitable that it would be Intel. The story of the first microprocessor.

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: The world lacks the ability to track individual health in near real-time. Roswell Biotechnologies says it has married accurate bio-sensing with the economies of scale associated with digital ICs. A conversation with Roswell Biotech founders Barry Merriman and Paul Mola. 

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: Facebook plans to maintain its business empire by building a virtual empire. But what does betting on virtual reality mean as a practical matter? A rollicking discussion with Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research. Also, an interview with Avnet CEO Phil Gallagher.

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: AI is the biggest story in the electronics industry, and by several measures Sambanova ranks among the biggest AI companies. An exclusive interview with SambaNova chief technologist Kunle Olukotun, who talks about what AI can do, AI supercomputers, and something called “dataflow threads.”

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: Wave power has lagged behind solar and wind, but it has perhaps the greatest potential. This week we talk about wave energy with C-Power CEO Reenst Lesemann and Bill Schmitz, president of Northwest Power. Our other guests include NXP CTO Lars Reger and Gianluca Pisanello from First Light Fusion. 

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: The world economy is reeling. Despite the travails, the electronics industry has been doggedly slogging on — but can it keep going? A conversation with Renesas EVP Sailesh Chittipeddi about the industry’s improving outlook, fab capacity, customer demand, green engineering, and more. Also, an interview with Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino. Sponsored by Renesas.

On the Weekly Briefing podcast: Prosthetic vision, a common concept in science-fiction, has long been out of reach in reality – but perhaps for not much longer. Researchers are about to start experiments to see if they can restore vision to the blind using prosthetics based on advanced sensor technology. Our guest is Philip Troyk, head of the Pritzker Institute of Biomedical Science and Engineering at Illinois Tech and the CEO of semiconductor supplier Sigenics.

This week’s podcast: AI is different from traditional computing, and it is stressing supporting technology in entirely new ways. That goes not only for processors (as one might expect), but also for memory chips. This week, a conversation with Steven Woo of Rambus, on the special challenges of AI.

This week’s podcast: Some amazing things have been accomplished with AI, but if AI is to become widely adopted, it must be safe and reliable, and there is no framework for demonstrating AI is either. Helen Toner, Director of Strategy at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, talks about what safe, reliable AI should look like.

This week’s podcast: We’ll be talking about the IoT, why AI and ML are critical at the edge, not just for applications, but for security. Our guest this week is Chris Catterton; he’s the head of solution engineering at a startup that two weeks ago was called OneTech but as of this week has been renamed Micro.AI.

This week’s podcast: Facebook is heading for the metaverse, and Nvidia toward the omniverse. These “places” are going to combine the real and the digital in many different ways, but they’ll all depend on display technology. We talk with Jon Peddie and Kathleen Maher from Jon Peddie Research about what a metaverse might be, and what metaverses mean for the electronics industry and, more importantly, for the us as we interface with the world.

This week’s podcast: After designing the world’s first working microprocessor and then pioneering in artificial intelligence, Federico Faggin has one last great frontier left to explore: human consciousness. A free-wheeling conversation with an industry legend on machine learning, quantum physics, experience, and more.

This week’s podcast: Our guest this week is Hassane El-Khoury, who nine months ago was named president and CEO of Onsemi (formerly ON Semiconductor). We talk about the transformation of the company, and what it’ll take to succeed in the semiconductor market when every IC company is going after the same growth markets.