Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits All About Circuits

Over the course of his fascinating career, Mark Himelstein has worked on several significant computing technologies at historic companies like MIPS and Sun Microsystems. He has also worked as a consultant in various roles that include architect, VP of engineering, and advisor. However, RISC-V may have a greater impact on the computing field and our world than any of those previous efforts. 
Himelstein gives us an insiders view on the open standard process that is often “cooperation and competition, simultaneously.”
“The thing that keeps us as a community is the effort in the software ecosystem. Nobody wants to really go off and go on their own. They just don't want to do it. It's just too costly. I don't care if you're the biggest company in the world or the tiniest.” 
Listen in on this episode of the Moore’s Lobby podcast as Daniel Bogdanoff and Himelstein chat about a wide range of interesting topics that include:
-How Himelstein encourages people to get involved with RISC-V by telling them to not just complain about something, but join in to help make it better.
-The significance of vector operations for computing and how those advantages may soon be extended to matrix operations within the ISA.
-Three major things RISC-V is currently working on for future release.
 

Daniel Cooley started his career in RF chip design at Silicon Labs and now leads technology and product development at “the number one wireless supplier” for the Internet of Things. In this thoughtful interview, Cooley explains why adding wireless connectivity is only the first step to completely rethinking product designs and features. He noted that “the home run cases aren't where wireless is the feature; it's where wireless made that product better.”
Cooley explains that Silicon Labs’ primary goal is to help companies get started with their preferred wireless protocol quickly and efficiently so they can focus on their applications instead of trying to debug the wireless links. Silicon Labs’ experience was forged on having “cut our teeth selling more than a billion wireless chips over many, many years.”
Our Moore’s Lobby host, Daniel Bogdanoff, chats with Cooley about a range of fascinating topics that include:
-Building wireless products for “metal benders.” 
-The surprising economic benefits of adding wireless connectivity to shelf labels.
-An explanation of the Matter protocol and why it is important.
-The Silicon Labs partnership with Arduino.
-Why the sky is falling…or at least the cloud is coming down.
-Reflection on a major project and when Cooley “realized none of it was going to work.”
-Why Cooley believes we will see a rethinking of the Internet infrastructure around non-human electronic devices.
 

While Moore’s Law scaling has driven incredible advancements in computing, AI, and smartphones, many applications don’t need or benefit from the most advanced semiconductor nodes. From its inception, Pragmatic Semiconductor’s goal has been to take a…well, pragmatic…approach to develop an ultra low-cost, fast cycle time alternative to traditional silicon processing. Oh, and did we mention that the resulting chips and wafers are also flexible?
You will definitely want to check out this Moore’s Lobby conversation between White and our host, Daniel Bogdanoff, as they dive into:
-The technology and manufacturing of thin-film silicon
-Europe’s largest-ever VC funding for a semiconductor company
-The potential advantages of flexible silicon for building a more robust supply chain
-White’s top priorities for improving the flexible silicon ecosystem

The chip shortage made us all think about the precarious semiconductor supply chain. In response, the US government has moved to bolster the domestic industry. The CHIPS and Science Act was signed into law in August 2022, but we are still waiting to see its impact on US semiconductor manufacturing.
In this podcast, we are joined by three industry insiders:
Rich Simoncic, EVP of Microchip Technology.
Russ Garcia, CEO of Menlo Micro.
Michael Knight, President & CEO at Endries International.
They will give us their perspective on the CHIPS Act and what should be done to improve the supply chain. In this engaging discussion, the group is hosted by our Moore’s Lobby host, Daniel Bogdanoff. Their discussion includes:
-The confusing relationship between the CHIPS Act and the current state of the supply chain. 
-The challenges of getting advanced R&D across the “valley of death.”
-Is it enough?
-The technologies and nodes that might be overlooked.
-What should a CHIPS Act 2 invest in?
 

During his fascinating career, Jack Kang has had the opportunity to work on iconic, massively successful products like the Microsoft Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Switch. Today, as one of the founding members of SiFive, Kang works alongside several of the creators of the RISC-V ISA to bring new products to market. 
SiFive is developing products based on the open RISC-V standard to deliver high-performance, low-power density processors for applications from wearables to data centers, edge computing, and aerospace.
The highlights of this conversation between Kang and our Moore’s Lobby host, Daniel Bogdanoff, include:
-His big career break 
-The transition from huge companies to a startup
-Open-source versus open-standard
-The security system that SiFive donated to the RISC-V community
 

A decade after demonstrating the first entanglement of semiconducting spin quantum bits, or qubits, Oliver Dial and IBM Quantum are developing the ICs, cryogenic systems, error mitigation techniques, and software tools that will identify solutions to problems beyond the scope of classical computers. Recently, the IBM Quantum team announced the Heron 133-qubit and Condor 1,121-qubit quantum processors, and Dial joins us to talk about a subject that he loves.
The highlights of this conversation between Dial and our Moore’s Lobby host, Daniel Bogdanoff, include:
A comparison of quantum and classic Turing computing systems. Temperatures down to 0.1 kelvin (brrr!) to noise temperatures of 30,000 kelvin (hotter than the sun, but not really). An audio symphony of quantum circuits running computations from around the world. Qubits are probably much bigger than you would expect. Why packaging engineers are the unsung heroes of the semiconductor and quantum industries. Semiconductor engineers telling quantum engineers, “you guys are doing these all wrong.” The technology advance in the newer Heron processor that Dial is most excited about.