Opinion: Future AI in EEE

Posted under Back to Basics, Educational, Technology on October 6th, 2024 by

Last week a student asked me about the scope of AI in the domain of Electrical Engineering so that he can “focus” on those for the future. A vast majority of people (even in tech!) are still not grasping the vastness of what is happening in the world of AI. Here’s my take on how AI might shape our industry, though I may look back at this post in 10 years and laugh at how far off I was!

Schematic Design: AI is going to dramatically change this. Manual schematic creation will die off. Think of tools like TI Webench but supercharged—where you type in your circuit functionality, and set parameters like cost or size, and AI will provide several optimized designs. Even BOM (Bill of Materials) selection will be automated, factoring in component availability during the design process itsel

PCB Layout: Auto routers have been bad but it was bad only because folks never put enough resources to truly build a good router. AI will integrate simulation and produce designs that already meet stringent EMI/EMC certifications. RF and High-speed designs are not black boxes anymore. It will be codified and automated by AI no matter what the complexity.

Chip Design: This area is already seeing AI deployment. AI can generate chip designs in ways that would take human teams years to discover. AI-designed chips will soon be creating the next generation of AI chips—it’s a self-accelerating process.

Firmware development: Code generators, with built-in testing, will interpret datasheets and produce solid firmware with test cases. What used to take hours or days to code could be handled by AI in minutes.

These are just some of the areas where I see AI revolutionizing embedded systems and EEE. Please understand AI won’t come for your job in the future not because it can’t do it, it will be because you can do it cheaper. My only advice to young engineers: Keep learning and evolve with the times. No field is a guaranteed safe zone with AI. Use it as a tool to grow to stay relevant! If there is interest, I can do a deeper dive into how AI might affect other EEE domains in a long-format blog post.

AI is going to reshape the future whether you like it or not. If you disagree, you’re either not paying attention or you’re simply in denial. Would love to hear your take, but it’s hard to argue against what’s already happening.

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Cool Tech (Literally!)

Posted under Educational, Product Design, Product Reviews, Technology on September 1st, 2024 by

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the cooling and thermal solutions space recently, you might have noticed a significant shift in the last year. A new tech is emerging that could eventually replace traditional cooling fans, working in tandem with vapor chambers (check my previous posts for more on that) and heat pipes. The key player driving this innovation is Frore Systems, which introduced its ultra-thin (just 2.5mm high) cooling solution last year at CES. Let’s dive into the tech behind it.

From what I’ve gathered through patents and videos, this technology revolves around active piezoelectric coolers. Piezoelectric materials have a unique property: they can deform or move when an alternating voltage is applied. They ingeniously leveraged this by creating a mechanical system where many tiny piezoelectric elements move in unison to generate airflow. Essentially, it’s a piezoelectric microelectromechanical (MEMS) system.

Why is this exciting? These MEMS devices can be produced using standard IC fabrication methods, meaning they can be scaled up for mass production. In terms of specs, they can generate nearly 1700Pa of static pressure, which allows them to push air through very small spaces at high speeds on an ultra-thin profile and even through filter membranes(Which means no dust in laptops!). There are already videos out there showing how laptops and phones retrofitted with these units achieve better cooling with virtually no additional noise. It’s easy to see how this could become the new standard for cooling consumer electronics.

I’m writing about this now because just last week, a new competitor entered the market: xMEMS Labs. They’ve demonstrated a 1mm-thick chip capable of cooling, likely using similar principles. However, xMEMS appears to be leveraging MEMS speaker technology to move air directly over the chip. Imagine a speaker displacing air at ultra-high frequencies beyond the audible range – this could be connected in parallel across a surface to achieve similar cooling effects. Read up more on them. I need to stop because of character count limitations.

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