Amelia's Weekly Fish Fry

Up Where We Belong

Fish Fry is flying high this week! We start things off with a little News You May Have Missed where we investigate the technology behind Glasgow, Scotland-based Kite Power Solutions. We take a closer look at out how they plan to make kite energy a commercial reality by 2025, and why their high-flying wind energy plans just got a big boost from the Imperial Department of Aeronautics and the UK’s National Wind Tunnel Facility. Also this week, Joe Sawicki (Mentor Graphics) and I are chatting up a storm about EDA in the cloud and why speed and scalability are super important for cloud EDA deployments.

Help One, Help Many

In this week’s Fish Fry, we are celebrating the winners of this year’s Not Impossible Awards with Kevin Sellers from Avnet. Kevin and I chat about how Avnet, Hackster i.o and Not Impossible Labs are facilitating a new era of groundbreaking technology that is not only good business - but also good for people. We take a closer look at each of this year’s award-winning designs that include the Butterfly iQ - the world’s first handheld whole-body ultrasound system, a new hands-free device to control computers and mobile phones from Puffin Innovations, and HotSpot - whose mission it is to connect the 3.9 billion people in the world who do not have access to the internet.

Communication’s Third Wave

Hello security, my old friend
I’ve come to design with you again
Because a hacker came creeping
left its malware while I was sleeping
and the code that was planted in my brain
still remains
within the sound of IoT

In this week’s episode of Fish Fry, I sit down with Vinay Gokhale (VP Business Development of ThirdWayv) to discuss the biggest hurdles in IoT security today and how ThirdWayv is using software innovation to fill the gap between silicon and demanding applications. Also this week, we check out The Persistence of Chaos - a new art installation that is one part artistic expression, one part computer malware armageddon, and one part 2008 Samsung NC10 Blue Netbook.

Drones, Dragons and Data Centers

This week’s episode of Fish Fry is absolutely brimming with geeky goodness! First, I check out some new Dungeons and Dragons names created by optical research scientist and neural network trainer extraordinaire Janelle Shane. Next, I chat with Matt Burns (Samtec) about the trends in interconnects and how interconnects are going to lead the charge in the advancement of data center technology. Finally, I investigate DOCOMO's new blimp-style drone that is propelled through the air with a little help from ultrasonic vibrations.

The Communication Super Highway

Optical communication takes center stage in this week’s episode of Amelia's Weekly Fish Fry. First up, Mark Benton (TE Connectivity) and I chat about the different levels where optics can exist in the world of electronic packaging and the how the most recent advancements in ruggedized fiber optic technology have ushered in a whole new era of box to box and PC to PC communication. Also this week, Patrick Mechin (Techway) joins us to discuss the biggest trends in rugged optical communication today and why signal integrity in these environments is more important than ever before.

 

Backward Balance Board

Sometimes we have to find a way around our design challenges. Sometimes finding the equilibrium between our design legacy and the futuristic stuff we want to do is harder than we we expected. In this week’s episode of Fish Fry, Nigel Forrester (Concurrent Technologies) joins us to discuss the ongoing security challenges in the world of embedded computing and how we can balance the past with the present and the future. Also this week, we check an amazing new discovery out of the University of Arizona that challenges some of our prevalent theories about how dying stars seed the universe.

The Curious Case of the Critical Catalyst

Are we really using the edge to the best of our ability? Sure, VR and AR are cool, but are they the best case for engineering and business development at the edge? In this episode of Fish Fry, I sit down with Kevin Hannah (CEO - Kazuhm) and chat about why he thinks artificial intelligence should take center stage at the edge and why our ability to process the tsunami of information that is coming at us from 5G, IoT, and Big Data is going to depend how successfully artificial intelligence is deployed at the edge. Also this week, we check out the details of Hacker.io and Avnet’s new “Bring Intelligence to the Real World” design contest.

Avoiding IoT Purgatory

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” - Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

We’ve all been there. We’ve lost of our way and the road ahead is more than just a bit fuzzy. In this week’s episode of Fish Fry, I sit down with Lou Lutostanski (Avnet) and chat about why IoT projects are so challenging and what we can do if we find ourselves stuck in “IoT Purgatory.” Keeping with our IoT theme, we also investigate how Purdue University is looking to protect our smart implanted devices with electro-quasistatic human body communications and how a new kickstarter campaign called “Fromaggio” is taking the IoC (Internet of Cheese) to a whole new level.

Wheels Up!

In this week’s episode of Fish Fry, Scott Engle (Mercury Systems) and I investigate the coexistence of safety and security in world of avionics and why the key to security in aviation may be tied to the reclassification of security-related failures. Keeping with our aviation theme, we also take a closer look at how FORDISC (a windows-based interactive software program) may have just solved the mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart once and for all.

 

Faster Interconnect! Go! Go!

What do Moore’s Law, the Von Neuman Bottleneck, and alpha-band brain activity have in common?! This week’s episode of Amelia’s Weekly Fish Fry! Matthew Burns (Samtec) joins us to discuss how we can prepare for the next wave of high speed fabrics in embedded computing and why  these new faster fabrics will make our design lives harder not easier. Also this week, we take a closer look at new research that contends that human brain waves respond to changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields.