Beyond the Microchip

Episode 004 - Power over Ethernet and Natural Disasters

Severe Storms. Wildfires. Floods. According to Statista, there were 421 natural disaster events recorded worldwide in 2022. Among the most damaging are tropical cyclones, what the World Health Organization would refer to as typhoons or hurricanes. As damaging as the wind can be, the greatest damage to life and property is not from the wind, but from secondary events such as storm surges, flooding, landslides, and tornadoes.
 
To combat and prepare for these events, world leaders and local governments try to anticipate early warning signs in advance of the event using satellite, radar, and other advanced technologies. Despite their best efforts, these disasters happen. When they do, communities are affected, and the damage can be extensive. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States, 2023 was the most expensive year on record for billion-dollar climate disasters.
 
What are these towns and municipalities to do? This is where Smart Cities come in.
 
How could Microchip Technology help bring Smart Cities to life?
 
Links from the episode:
Power over Ethernet | Microchip Technology 
 
Guests: 
Alan Jay Zwiren 

Episode 003 - Sensors, Microcontrollers, and Farm-2-Table in Smart Agriculture

When you sit down to eat your next meal, think about how your food got in front of you. Did you grow it yourself or did you buy it from someone? If the latter, was it from a restaurant or a store? Do you ever wonder how it gets from the farm to your plate?
Whether you are a vegan or a die-hard carnivore, your food comes from a farm somewhere. It needs to be grown, harvested, processed, and transported to a place where it is then prepared and offered for sale. This process can be anywhere from days to months and can come from down the road or across oceans and continents. One thing is for certain, it probably involves one or more integrated circuits along the way. 
 
How could Microchip Technology help bring food from the farm to your table?
 
Links from the episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpe6pvxtag 
 
Guests: 
Ross Satchell 
Toby Sinkinson 

Episode 002 - I3C Protocol and the Rise of Data Centers

Picture an average night at home. You’re sitting on the couch, remote in hand, maybe with a beverage by your side. You use your remote to navigate through the menu of your favorite streaming platform to select an episode of your favorite TV show. You pause to give a command to your smart speaker to shut off the music you were playing before sitting down. As you watch the show, you recognize an actor you like, but you can’t remember where from, so you grab your mobile phone and run a search in your internet browser. Satisfied with the answer, you speak into your smart watch to set a reminder for later to watch a different show starring the same actor. All the while you are lounging with your feet up and feeling quite relaxed; never thinking about the bank of server blades in a data center far away working tirelessly to power the cloud that brings this convenience to the palm of your hand. Our lives are increasingly dependent on the cloud and whether we realize it or not, those data centers are growing and using an amazing amount of energy.
 
How could Microchip Technology help address the growing need for Data Centers in a sustainable way without compromising our new standard of life?
 
Links from the episode:
I3C® | Microchip Technology 
https://www.mipi.org/knowledge-library/webinars/mipi-i3c-week-exploring-world-of-i3c
 
Guests:
Ashish Makthal 
Max Prasad 

Episode 001 - Inductive Position Sensors, Thermocouple ICs, and the perfect Espresso

One of the few things every human on this planet, and every other living thing for that matter, shares is the fact that everything gets 1,440 minutes per day. Our planet makes one rotation on its axis, the sun comes up, the sun goes down and we start the dance all over again. Part of the human experience is how we spend that time.
Multiple sources, including the Mayo Clinic and the World Health Organization, suggest humans need 7-10 hours of sleep. The average workday is also 7-10 hours depending on where you live. The time in between can be consumed with breaks from work or between classes, meals, getting ready for the day and getting ready for bed, not to mention time spent commuting to and from work or school; if you have children, they take most of the rest of your time. With only a few precious minutes per day to ourselves, under the best of circumstances, what would an additional 30 of those minutes mean to us? How could Microchip Technology help to create a time machine to give us this part of our lives back?
 
URLs from the episode:
www.microchip.com/inductive-position-sensors
www.microchip.com/thermocouple-ic 
 
Guest: Dr. Mark Smith
Mark Smith | LinkedIn 

Episode 000 - Welcome to Beyond the Microchip

Welcome to Beyond the Microchip
So much of our daily lives are controlled or influenced by electronics. We rely on GPS to direct us, we hit "brew" on our coffee machines for our mornin' cup of Joe, we wave our hands over a sensor to get running water from a faucet and press a button to open our garage doors. 
But do we really know what's going on inside? Are we aware of the universe of technology and calculations going on right under our nose?
Beyond the Microchip takes you inside the world of Embedded Control technologies to understand how the chips and sensors we can't see impact our lives in dramatic ways. They remind us why we have and embrace technology, to enhance the human experience. 
 
Join us each episode as we look at an aspect of our daily lives that shapes what it means to be human and how we can empower the innovation that enhances that experience through Microchip Technology. Subscribe to Beyond the Microchip wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Visit MCHP.com to learn more!