Inside Electronics

In this episode of Inside Electronics from Electronic Design, host Alix Paultre interviews Mayrim Verdejo, product line manager-high voltage amplifiers at Texas Instruments (TI), about the growing complexity of embedded-system design.

Mayrim notes engineers must add functionality and bring products to market faster while managing such challenges as power, sensing, signal conditioning, control, timing, wireless connectivity, and other essential functions. She says that trusted, proven components free designers to focus on product differentiation rather than rebuilding basic circuits.

Alix and Mayrim identify autonomous vehicles, AI, medical equipment, and data centers as major drivers of integration, yet emphasize that these technologies depend on reliable foundational components. Mayrim says designers weigh performance, cost, design time, long-term availability, supply-chain reliability, and quality when selecting parts.

Mayrim also presents TI’s differentiation as a broad analog and embedded portfolio, application support and design tools, pin-compatible options, rigorous qualification, and long-term reliability.

The closing message: Designers should consider revisiting existing designs and consider TI’s newer general-purpose and application-specific offerings to improve cost, size, and performance.

Unlike traditional radio frequency communication, optical communication uses narrow and highly focused beams of light that enable up to 100 times higher data transmission rates and make links harder to detect, jam, or intercept. Laser communication can also reduce dependence on congested radio frequency spectrum, where operators face regulatory scrutiny, licensing delays, and interference bottlenecks.

Penguin Solutions is an interesting company when it comes to compute and storage. At one end of the spectrum is their SMARTsemi brand with DRAM, SD cards and flash storage devices that are used in a range of embedded applications and CREE LED. At the other is Stratus Technologies with its fault tolerant data center solution. Penguin Solutions CTO, Philip Pokorny, talks about the various technologies and the history of the company.

In this episode of Inside Electronics, sponsored by Texas Instruments, Alix Paultre, Editor at Large for Electronic Design, interviews Brian Burk, of Texas Instruments (TI), about the rapid growth of energy storage and the critical role of battery monitoring technologies.

Alix and Brian discuss how the rise of renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs), and grid-scale storage, has created a growing need for batteries that can safely store and deliver energy when needed. They also talk about how battery management systems (BMS) have evolved from basic voltage and temperature monitoring to sophisticated solutions that improve performance, extend battery life, and enhance safety.

A major focus of the episode is TI’s new 26-cell battery monitor and its use of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), a technology that provides deeper insight into battery health, temperature, and operating conditions. Many compare EIS to a medical EKG, enabling system designers to “see inside” a battery and prevent issues, such as overheating and thermal runaway.

The discussion concludes with a description of TI’s integrated battery-management approach and predicting broader adoption of EIS across EV and energy-storage applications in the coming years.

Compute Express Link (CXL) is becoming more important in data centers has the need for more storage grows to address artificial intelligence (AI) needs. Anil Gobaleh, Chair of the Marketing Working Group (MWG) with the CXL Consortium, talks about what is up with CXL and where it is headed. One of the interesting aspects in our discussion is how DDR4 is being used with CXL, which is targeting the high end where DDR5 dominates.