Powering the Future: Ambient IoT and Sustainable Innovation

Transcript

• Steve Statler 0:00

  Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. This week, we have Silicon Labs on the show, their senior director from their product marketing organization, diraj sagani, joins me, super knowledgeable person working for this billion dollar mainstay of the Internet of Things. I'm biased, but I see the silicon chips as being pivotal to what we're doing in IoT. And Silicon Labs has really comprehensive portfolio of products. They're not tied to just Bluetooth. They have offerings that support all of the major IoT protocols, and so they've seen a lot. Their chips are in an incredibly large number of edge devices, and they have in the last year, been talking about ambient IoT, helping to educate the ecosystem about it, and launching ambient IoT products that

  that can be used to enable devices that subsist on energy that is harvested from the environment, very low cost. So I hope you find this a useful addition to your encyclopedic knowledge of this industry that's changing the world. Check out this conversation with diraj. The Mr. Beacon ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by williot, bringing intelligence to every single thing. Diraj, it's great to have you as someone who's right at the center of Silicon Labs on the podcast. Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast.

  Dhiraj Sogani 1:46

  Thanks Steve for having me at the podcast here. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I've heard a lot of good things about the podcast. I've heard a lot of podcasts that you've done, so all of it is excellent work. I'm looking forward to it.

  Steve Statler 1:59

  I appreciate it. And in the my, you know, this podcast is a continuation of the beacon technologies book. It's an attempt to kind of make it an evergreen thing. And we try and help people understand the building blocks for IoT, for what we now call ambient IoT. It wasn't a thing at the time I wrote the book, and the chip vendors are really at the heart of it. Maybe I'm biased, because I work for a chip vendor as well, but I feel like, you know what we do are the essential building blocks, the Lego blocks that everything else gets built out of. And without those core engines, then it just doesn't work. And Silicon Labs, I think it's fair to say, is really focused on Internet of Things and kind of the local area network, as opposed to kind of the cellular modems and all the stuff that the qualcomms do. So I'm looking forward to really understanding a bit more about what you're doing in ambient IoT. I've seen a bunch of announcements from you a lot of products. So I also want to understand more about Silicon Labs. I think, you know, people need to understand the neighborhood and who the giants are, and Silicon Labs is very significant. So let's talk about that. And you know, lastly, I just want to pick your brains about what you're seeing in the industry. What's moving, where the growth is, where the opportunities are. So, you know, maybe we should just have a brief introduction of Silicon Labs, and then we'll get into the ambient IoT. For anyone that's not come across Silicon Labs. Who are you? What do you do?

  Dhiraj Sogani 3:34

  Absolutely So Silicon Labs, we are focused on wireless solutions for IoT Edge devices really right? So we are not really going after really large devices, for example, cell phones, laptops, none of that stuff. It's really focused on the edge devices. We have, in fact, if you really look at Silicon lamps, we have the widest portfolio of all wireless technologies which are used in IoT devices. So name it and we have it right? If you look at Wi Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z wave, matter, sidewalk, some of the new ones, then we have Wyson, which is another one, which is there as well, right? So we have a huge, in fact, the widest portfolio. And we always strive to stay on the leading edge of these wireless technologies. We are very active in all of these alliances to see what exactly is required by the end customers, and how we as Silicon Labs can help out these end customers to design IoT Edge devices with these wireless standards.

  Steve Statler 4:30

  Very good. And so like Bluetooth six has just come out, we just recorded an interview with about channel sounding only on the Mr. Beacon podcast, would you have a whole episode on general sounding and and Bluetooth six? Is that something that you're going to be supporting are supporting now? Oh,

  Dhiraj Sogani 4:51

  absolutely in fact. So Bluetooth, we've always stayed on the leading edge of the Bluetooth technology all along, right? So we started working on Bluetooth. So. Are kind of years back right and BK plus back right. So, and we have always stayed on the leading edge of all the Bluetooth standards which have come out, including, in fact, five dot x, along with 6.0 which is now channel sounding. So five dot x, which had, of course, aox, some of those as well. So if you look at the applications of Bluetooth, and you know that well, right from your other wheel, IoT job as well. And of course, you are looking into that. It has huge number of applications, and they're just growing day by day. So of course, everything, which was Bluetooth Classic, is moving over to Bluetooth low energy, right? So all the audio stuff is moving over there as well. Throughputs are increasing, right? So Bluetooth now supports high throughput. They are even thinking of going up to eight megabits per second in moving forward. And they're also looking at other bands, not just 2.4 gigahertz. They're looking at six gigahertz band as well, right? So all of the things are changing, right? So of course, if you look at it, Bluetooth Classic is really primarily focusing now on audio applications and everything else seems to be moving on to Bluetooth co energy, which eventually will take over audio as well, say channel sounding, of course, right? So we just announced a channel sounding solution as well, and that's one of our major products, right? Because channel sounding is extremely beneficial when you're trying to do, in fact, ranging and channel sounding, if you look at it, there are large number of technologies which can be used for distance, direction, all of that stuff. Aox helps out in direction. Channel sounding helps out in accurate distance measurement. And we have done, in fact, we are the only ones who have a kind of production solution in the market today with channel sounding, and in terms of accuracy, we can provide most of the cases, it would be sub 30 centimeter kind of accuracy with, in fact, with almost about, I would say, 30 to 40 meter, kind of a distance. We can go higher than that as well. But certainly there may be some compromises on the accuracy. So there are a lot of applications, for example, like Key West entry mechanism, door lock kind of applications as well, where you can start using some of these channel sounding solutions. So we are quite, quite bullish on that. And of course, from a power point of view, we have extremely low power consumption. And this is something which is a pillar for Silicon Labs, because power is the basis of all of these battery operated devices, right? So you need to, you need to keep going lower and lower and lower and provide higher and higher functionality. That's just the nature of it. And this is where this may be perfect segue to ambient IoT. Now, right? So if you get into ambient IoT, that's exactly what it is, right? So you really have to make sure that your energy consumption of the system is low enough so that it can be powered by ambient energy sources. That's you do what this whole thing is about, right? So, but if you look at it, it's not as simple as that, right? You really have to analyze the whole system, starting off with, what is your energy source that you're going to use? Which harvester Are you going to use? What storage mechanism Are you going to use? What PMIC power management, IC you're going to use? Then eventually, what is the wireless connectivity, what is the processing that you're going to use? Really, optimization has to be done on each one of these stages to be able to create a system which is ambient, energy friendly system, if you will. Right? So that's where I think we have put in a lot of effort. We are not into energy harvesting solutions. We don't provide energy harvesting solutions of our own. We are dependent on partners who do that. And some of the partners that we have kind of publicly talked about, Dracula, for example, is one of them. Dracula creates these very low kind of light, dim light cells as well, and which can help out in generating energy. So

  Steve Statler 8:40

  this is basically a device that can take the energy from light and feed that into the system that you you are providing the components for, absolutely,

  Dhiraj Sogani 8:52

  right? So that's one thing, which is there. And then, in addition to that, we have a partner EPS. EPS provides a power management IC. And then you have another partner, energies, right? So energies, in fact, we can, we can harvest energy from wireless sources as well, right? So, of course, that is the energy harvesting part of it. Then there we talked about a little bit about the pmec part of it as well. Then there are storage right? There are caps and all which have to be used depending upon the solution the system that you're trying to do, you need to make sure that you choose appropriate storage devices on the energy side. And

  Steve Statler 9:23

  you said caps, caps, meaning capacitors, right? Yes, that's where you're you're generally, you're generally not charging up a charging up a battery. Generally it doesn't mean so you can't, but generally you're harvesting the energy from from light, from kinetic Yep, in the case of energies, maybe from radio waves, and then storing it in a capacitor, and you

  Dhiraj Sogani 9:49

  can charge the batteries again, again. Depends on what kind of energy source that you have. There are things that can be done. So energy solution does have that capability as well. The question is, do we want to get to that? Stage, right? So I'll get onto why exactly we don't want to get there right. And there will be some applications where we may need to do that right. But now, if you look at the last component of it, that's where we are focusing as a camera. So if you look at the wireless, SOC, there's a huge amount of work which has to be done to make sure that it is energy friendly and

  Steve Statler 10:18

  just SOC, what's that? It's

  Dhiraj Sogani 10:22

  a system on chip, right? So really, what we have is MCU microcontroller there along with a wireless solution. Wireless could be a Bluetooth solution. It could be a two to 15 four solution. It could be Wi Fi solution. What have you right? So, but huge amount of work has to be done to make sure that this device is energy friendly. And what that really means is, first of all, the boot up time has to be extremely, extremely small. The Sleep energy consumption has to be very, very small. Transition from sleep to active state has to be very, very fast. In the radio has to consume very less energy. It has to be very efficient. You should be able to transfer the data in a very small amount of time and go back to the lowest energy state. So all of these, if you look at it, significant optimization has to be done at the system on chip level to make sure that we are able to use the energy sources which are coming in, and we are not dependent upon some large battery or large energy sources. So this is where we have put in a huge amount of effort and ambient IoT, we are just scratching the surface right now. It's just starting right. So there's a lot of work to be done in that space. But with our low power foundation that we have, and all our devices are low power devices, we are progressing towards making every device an energy friendly, energy harvesting, friendly device, refuel, yes,

  Steve Statler 11:48

  so you've long been providing system on chip devices with the radio and the processor that will work with smaller and smaller batteries, coin cell batteries, printed batteries. And so in a sense, that's a form of ambience, because the cost is very low. They're very small. You can go everywhere. But of course, you have to change the batteries eventually, and that's where kind of the infrastructure cost goes up. It's not the capital costs, it's the maintenance costs, and that can be the the killer. So, so I think, even though I think you can say a printed battery device could be ambient, it's really getting rid of the battery. I think makes a better ambient device. It allows you to tag more of the the everyday things that are around us. Just

  Dhiraj Sogani 12:39

  one more thing I would add over there is in terms of, if I really look at it, in terms of battery, as you indicated it just along that side. Of course, reducing cost is an important part of the battery, but it's also from an environment point of view. Because if you look at it, almost about 15 billion batteries are used annually. It's huge, right? And just imagine the amount of dump that we are creating over there. So it's very important to get rid of that and see how we can transition as

  Steve Statler 13:06

  well. Very good point. Yeah, sustainability and, you know, batteries have definitely have challenges when you're looking at recyclability. And basically the even the warnings you have to put on products, when you have a battery, then you have to put warnings, and that can not be desirable from a merchandising perspective. And you know, it can be a problem with temperature tolerance. You know, we see more applications in in cold chain, where the temperatures are very low and the batteries will work, but the battery life and the performance goes way, way down. And so I think having ambient IoT to work in in food freezers and so forth, there's definitely some benefits there as well. So you've specialized in low power. What is it that distinguishes kind of the pre ambient IoT, low power solution and the sort of products that you're making that are focused on ambient IoT? Is it just more efficiency?

  Dhiraj Sogani 14:14

  So again, if you really look at it, pre ambient IoT, you had the luxury of battery and in some cases, even line powered kind of devices as well, right? And there is a whole big market for that, and we are not saying that's going away, and that's our bread and butter. And there's a huge number of devices which will continue doing that as well, right? But again, as I indicated, of course, first is reducing the energy consumption of the system is good, that's but you have to look at every step. And that is what we are doing, every step in the whole system, on chip, right? Where exactly can you optimize the time? Where exactly can you optimize the energy consumption? How fast can you transmit the data? Do you really need all. The security level that you're talking about, because as soon as you add additional security layers, does that really complicate your system? Do you need it in some of these devices? Right? So you have to really have a little bit of a different mindset, a different thought process, from a system design point of view. And you also have to keep the sources in mind. What are the sources that you're looking at. How much can they provide you, right? So, and if a source takes a huge amount of time to charge a capacitor and then boot up a system, that's not a viable solution. So you have to look at all of those as well to figure out if it is a solution that makes sense. So we think, for example, our current solutions from asset tag point of view, right? So as you indicated, cold chain monitoring point of view. Those are some real life examples where we can certainly use ambient IoT. There could be electronic shelf levels, for example, right? Where you can use the light energy and make sure the shelf level kind of charges on its own as well. So there are a lot of these applications where we can slowly transition from regular IoT to so called ambient IoT, depending upon different energy sources.

  Steve Statler 16:06

  So what are the products that you consider to be in that category? What do you have to sell for people that are building ambient IoT solutions? If

  Dhiraj Sogani 16:17

  you look at it, we have really launched one product family today, which is, we are calling that as XG 22 product which has Bluetooth capability. It has a two to 15 four in there as well. And there are customers who can do some proprietary wireless 2.4 gigahertz by five on wireless ones on this one, right? Not Wi Fi, proprietary 2.4 gigahertz by this. So this is something that they can do. This is something that we have officially launched today, and we are looking at all other products. And as I indicated, we have large number of products on Bluetooth, Wi Fi, ZigBee, Z wave, matter, sidewalk, we are looking at all of these products to see how we can continue optimizing the energy and making them more and more energy friendly, and more and more energy harvesting friendly, right? So that's something that we're looking at right now. So, as I indicated, right? So power has always been the pillar for all the products that Silicon Labs does. So in fact, if you look at the MCS that we have, in fact, if you look at all wireless technologies that we have, right, everything, power is our fundamental pillar. And then, of course, there are other pillars, like security that I just talked about, security is an important pillar, but in some cases, you may need to change the security level to make it more energy friendly, so we understand how exactly the energy consumption changes with different security levels.

  Steve Statler 17:35

  Can you be a bit more specific? Because I totally agree with you. You know, if you're going to have a tag in an item of clothing that costs just some socks or whatever, then you're not going to want a full security stack, and you're probably just not it's just not going to be practical to have a lot of the key exchange and and So how do you look at that? What get? Tell me, give me a few more specifics about what you've just described. Again,

  Dhiraj Sogani 18:07

  security is a huge level. So there are different levels of security. And some of our devices, we have PSA, level three security as well, which is built into the devices, which is driven by arm, right? So, so, PSA, yeah. PSA, exactly. What is that? So it could be things like tamper proofing your device, right? So there are a lot of these little things which they keep on adding to it, and they're important again, when you're talking about an enterprise device, when you're talking about a medical device, when you're talking about a home security kind of a device, there are things which are important. But when you're talking about a tag which is going to do maybe a temperature measurement, or tag which is going to be for simple locationing purposes, right? These additional things are not required. You really need to make a tamper proof? Do you really need to do all the key exchanges which are required? Okay? And what kind of security algorithms do you want to use? So all of those things, I think you can really think about what is the bare minimum that you need to do. And maybe you can say, I don't want anything on the MCU side. I'm okay with just the wireless security part of it. That's fine. So those are the trade offs which have to be made. And it's no I would say there is no single right answer to this. It's really dependent upon what your application is, and that's really based on that customers have to decide what makes sense. So what we have done is, in our energy harvesting, friendly device that we have done, we have kind of reduced the security level for the applications that you're going after right now. And we have other devices which are extremely high security, and they can run off batteries. They may not be able to run off ambient light, for example. No. But then there are other components to this as well, right? So then we have the third pillar that we have now is machine learning, right? So machine learning is an important part as well, right now, the question is, can you do something with the accelerator? We have a built in hardware accelerator which can expedite the in fact, which can really. Process things very fast in some of the cases, can we leverage some of these accelerators to, again, further reduce energy consumption of the system? Right? So that's another thought process that we are kind of going through right now, and see how we can start leveraging these accelerators as well. Then, of course, on the software side, what are the things that you can do to optimize the software itself so that the stack size is minimized. It's bare minimum stack which is required for a particular application. So these are kind of different layers, and you really have to look across every layer. And then finally, you have to think about the protocol. Which protocol is suited for a particular application. Do you want to use group with low energy? Do you want to use SIG, P you want to use Z wave, you want to use Wi Fi, right? So Wi Fi? A lot of people say, okay, Wi Fi consumes a huge amount of energy. In lot of cases, I would say it may become energy friendly because it can transmit the same amount of data in a much shorter duration, right? Yes, and other devices may take longer. It all again, depends on how much data you're trying to transmit. And let's say you're transmitting an image, Wi Fi may be a much better solution, as opposed to BLE also in some of the cases, or Zig VC, right? Because it can transmit go back to sleep. That way you can reduce the energy consumption of the whole system.

  Steve Statler 21:13

  I totally agree with that point. I was just our CTO Alon, Jessie, who is really the brains behind what we've done in this space was pointing out exactly that point to me the other day when he was talking about, where do we take the standards in the future? You know, Bluetooth is a great transport for ambient IoT, but how could it be made even better? And, you know, what does Wi Fi have to offer? Because, of course, there's work building the ambient power functionality into future Wi Fi devices, 802, 11 BP, so that speed that ability to even when you're sending just a an asset identifier and maybe a temperature measurement, very short. But if I can do that in half the time, then I'm actually consuming less energy. We kind of think that speed necessarily means I'm consuming huge amounts of power. But in many ways, the reverse is true, absolutely. The great thing is is we haven't squeezed all the juice out of the lemon. There's more that we can do to make the edge devices more ambient friendly and the end nodes more ambient friendly as well. Yeah.

  Dhiraj Sogani 22:29

  So now, if you look at Wi Fi, going back to the Wi Fi point, right? With the new standard of Wi Fi that is Wi Fi six, lot of improvements have happened in this, right? So really, you can have a lot more devices coexisting in the same environment with less collisions, that way you can really transmit freely right earlier. That was not the case with Wi Fi four. Very less number of devices could coexist, and there was a lot more collision which was happening, which was increasing the energy consumption of the system. Because with collisions, we have to retry with Wi Fi six, there's a significant change that has happened, lot more devices can coexist. So it has become a little bit more ambient friendly. And now there's a whole different angle to this as well, right? So frequency, which frequency domain should you be operating? Sub gigahertz, for example. Sub gigahertz can provide you a longer range, much longer range, right? So the question is, in some of the applications that may make sense to use a sub gigahertz kind of a solution. It could be a proprietary it could be a standard based solution, whatever, what have you. But it may make sense to do that along with necessary energy harvesting solutions as well. So you have to look into that component as well protocol. Then you're going into the kind of frequency that you're using. So all of those are important components. Yeah. Are

  Steve Statler 23:41

  you able to talk a bit more about your relationship with energies? Because that's a company that we've had on the podcast. We've partnered with them. My own company has partnered with them. Can you talk a bit more about your relationship with them?

  Dhiraj Sogani 23:57

  Sure, absolutely. So we are always, in fact, partnering with companies like energis, who can provide us the necessary energy harvesting kind of solutions, and energies is a pretty interesting one, because they do have wireless kind of charging capabilities, and that is really what makes them interesting. And there are radio waves all around if there's something that we can do to use that to charge and that is where energies comes in, right? So we have demonstrated solutions with them on our XG 22 device. We have demonstrated a solution where we had an energies solution sitting on the side and that was providing energy to our XG 22 for tag, kind of an application. So we have done that, and we have done some similar applications with Dracula, for example, Dracula, along with EPS, you have done that as well. So the thing is, we are not dictating the energy sources. Energy Sources are coming based on the application. We have to look at Walter the ambient energy sources available for a particular application. So we are open to all partners who can. Help us out. It could be kinetic, it could be light, it could be radio waves, or what have you right. So we really have to look at all of those energy sources, because depending upon the application, we have to pick, or, in fact, in our case, the customer has to pick the right energy harvesting solution which can really provide them the necessary energy for the system,

  Steve Statler 25:20

  and who typically are your customers? So

  Dhiraj Sogani 25:24

  customers, in fact, if you look at Silicon Labs, right? So Silicon Labs, there we have two major business units. One is industrial and commercial business unit. One is home and life business unit. So industrial and commercial business unit. So just as the name kind of indicates there, so industrial is we are dealing with a lot of asset tag kind of applications, right? So, location kind of solutions. They could be sensor kind of solutions there as well. Then we have commercial we are things like ESL electronic shelf labels over there as well. Point of sale terminals could be there. Agriculture is part of this as well. So we have a lot of agricultural sensors, which are perfect for ambient IoT, if you will. Right? So then we have home and life where home is like, of course, when you're talking about home, there's whole home automation. There are a lot of things that can be done from an ambient IoT point of view there as well. Because there are home sensors, temperature sensors, could be ambient IoT based. At present, they are not. But there is a transition that we are seeing, which is going to happen there as well. And there is a life right, where things like, for example, continuous glucose monitoring systems, then we have customers who are kind of designing smart watches, who are using our solutions as well. So there's a whole broad range, because we have a wide portfolio of wireless technologies. And if you look at it, these wireless technologies are used across all of these different applications, but not all of them are battery operated. A lot of them are, and a lot of them may not be energy harvesting friendly, either. But wherever we can find a space to get into energy harvesting, we are looking into solutions.

  Steve Statler 26:59

  Yeah, I think it's really exciting seeing new classes of products that are going online. And I tend to talk about the food, the medicine, the clothing, but also the parts of products. So if we look at houses, there's all sorts of opportunities to connect more and more of the components of the house. And I think of like just double glazing, for example. You know, double glazing, it has a finite life. The life is quite long, so having a battery powered sensor in your double glazing probably doesn't make sense, but there's all sorts of potential sources of energy that you could have, if you embedded connectivity and double glazing. And you know, this is really useful. We have the phenomenon of of, you know, water leaking into the double glazing. Your glazing gets misted up. And then, you know, what happens when you want to repair or you want replacement. If you bought your double glazing 10 years ago, you may not even remember where you got it from, documentation, the manual, the reorder, the warranty, all of that may be missing. But if you've got identity and a digital product passport that's associated with the double glazing, then that can be really helpful for you as a consumer, and if I make the double glazing, this ability to get the replacement business is just like one example of where I think ambient IoT will spread from some of the applications that we're seeing today to things in the future.

  Dhiraj Sogani 28:37

  Absolutely. So temperature sensors at the home, you have sensors scattered all over, right? So you are, you can have security sensors. That may be another one that you can start looking into as well. There's a whole wireless sensing which is coming up as well, right? So that that those applications, and of course, there are other applications we are pretty big in metering. For example, electric meters, water meters, garage door openers. So those are some other applications that we are big into. Some of those applications may not be as much, but certainly, I would say some of these other applications we can certainly transition into ambient IoT kind of solutions,

  Steve Statler 29:11

  very good. You mentioned sidewalk earlier on in our conversation. I'm interested in coming back to that. You know, this is maybe, can you explain what sidewalk is? I've been wanting to get someone from Amazon on the show to talk about it, and one day, it's gonna happen, but it seems like a very long road. So if you can just explain what sidewalk is and what you're doing there.

  Dhiraj Sogani 29:35

  So in fact, yeah, of course, Amazon sidewalk, that's a great technology for connecting neighborhood in reality, right? That's what we're talking about here. And we are a very close partner of Amazon. We have developed multiple solutions with them, just as kind of the name indicates. It's a pretty nice name. I like it because it's a sidewalk. What we are doing is really connecting neighborhood houses together. So you can, for example, share a small amount of your bandwidth. So it's typically. Think it's about 500 megabytes per month. Is what you share, okay? And then you can, for example, if your pet or your kids are playing in the neighborhood, through your neighborhood network, you should be able to figure out exactly where they are. So it's really kind of creating a neighborhood network based on existing solutions right now. For example, everyone has Alexa at home. Alexa is already, is Amazon sidewalk enabled, right? So now the question is, what you can do is you can create devices which can connect to Alexa, which eventually connects to the cloud, of course, and if somebody is kind of walking in the neighborhood, right, your kid or a pet using your neighborhood network, you should be able to figure out where exactly the kid is, right? So that's a pretty interesting application. So that's what they're trying to do. It's in early stages right now, deployment, I would say, and there are some challenges in some other geographies as well. The technology is very promising. It's leveraging from a wireless protocol point of view. It's leveraging what is already existing, right So, and that's something that they're doing. And the good thing about America is, at least North America, the proliferation of Alexa is just huge in the market. And using that, you can really start creating this network as well. Yeah,

  Steve Statler 31:07

  so I think there's an argument that says that sidewalk is has a role in in ambience. If ambience is connecting every single thing, then the the range is really great. Yeah, there's a strategy for getting you from the local area to the wide area, because all of your rain, sorry, ring cameras and doorbells and the Amazon Echo devices, they're all connected. So I think it is really promising. And the coverage maps that I've seen are pretty impressive, the level of you know, if this was a wireless carrier, they would be proud to have some of the coverage they have, especially in the in the metropolitan areas, exactly.

  Dhiraj Sogani 31:53

  And the good thing is, you're not creating anything new. Of course, in some cases where the coverage is less they have some specific devices, like an access point, kind of a device which they have, but overall, in general, it's pretty good coverage. And then sensors, for example, you can even put sensors in your, for example, yards and all and those sensors can be connected to sidewalk and you can figure out what's happening. So in reality, for example, humidity sensors, which are on the yard, they can be on the sidewalk network as well. So extremely good use cases. We are very closely engaged with Amazon team to see how exactly kind of they push it out. We do have a large number of solutions which do support Amazon sidewalk today as well.

  Steve Statler 32:32

  If I wanted to build, start up a company, I get religion, I want to do sidewalks. So I buy my system on chips from from you and but I need to do a deal with Amazon, presumably to build that dog tracker or whatever the thing is that I'm building.

  Dhiraj Sogani 32:53

  So again, at the end of the day, the thing is, Amazon is trying to enable a lot of device makers, so you don't, you may not have to directly deal with Amazon, so long as you're following the specific protocols, I think. So that's something which is there. So that's the reason the companies like us, right? So we have all of those necessary components to make device which is Amazon sidewalk enabled, if you go very

  Steve Statler 33:21

  good. Well, we've covered a lot. I'm just trying to think, if there's anything else that you you want to cover, hopefully people have got a sense of Silicon Labs, diversity of portfolio and market presence, anything that you want to add in this section of the show,

  Dhiraj Sogani 33:41

  yeah. So, in fact, if I really look at it, of course, IoT has come a long way, right? So I started, because I'm sure you also started looking at IoT when it was called, What, end to end, end to end to IoT, to MB and IoT. There's a lot of progress that keeps happening here, right? So one thing which we are seeing certainly is machine learning. I did briefly allude to that earlier. So machine learning is an important component of IoT and with accelerators, this is one area that as a company, we are focusing on, because we think that's important for all edge devices. A lot more processing is going to happen on the edge. So we started off with, of course, low power or the wireless connectivity, we have security, we have the software done. Now the next major pillar is machine learning. And machine learning first is we start with standard IoT, then we optimize it further to get into ambient IoT. But that's an important thing, which I think is going to drive the industry forward from an IoT point of view as well as ambient IoT point of view as well. So that's an important one, which I think I'm not sure whether you've done anything on machine learning, but that's one area that certainly, as a company, we are focusing on. And machine learning on the edge is a different problem, of course, right? It's a very different problem. So you, for example, if you want to do data analysis, if you want to do, for example, some all. Video or voice analysis, some image analysis, some video analysis. Everything needs different kind of capabilities. So on an edge side, certainly the limited resources are there, and you may not have an option to, of course, connect to the cloud. So there are interesting techniques which have to be used to make that happen. So that's an area where we think it's going to grow as well.

  Steve Statler 35:20

  I couldn't agree with you more. I absolutely agree. We actually had the head of tinyml.org on the show. So if you want to go and anyone wants to check that out, that's really an organization that's promoting moving more and more of the algorithms that in the past may have run centrally on the cloud onto the edge, where there's a lot lower environmental impact, and all sorts of other benefits. So we go into that. But I think, you know, one other thing I just want to add to support what you've said is that I think it's important that we think about ambient IoT as like the extended nervous system for artificial intelligence. You know, it's all very well having this incredibly intelligent brain, but if it's kept in a jar somewhere, and it's not really connected with the real world, then it's hard to really unlock the benefit of both the ambient IoT network and the intelligence, the incredible levels of intelligence. But if we bring them together, and we think about ambient IoT as as feeding the sensing signals, the events, into that central intelligence, and then we think about distributing, and, you know, taking executive decisions and then monitoring what's happening, then there's a, I think it's a pretty good metaphor, the extended nervous system for AI. And just like the extended nervous system, you know, all of your intelligence is not in your brain. It's actually kind of pushed down through the spinal column and so forth. And so I think, in

  Dhiraj Sogani 36:58

  fact, that you bring your brain very good point, because that's exactly the we just have. I don't know whether you're familiar. We have Silicon Labs. We have our own conference called works with and we just had our works with summit in Austin, then we had another summit in San Jose, then we have an upcoming summit in October in Hyderabad, and then one in Shanghai. And there, in fact, we had a keynote with Nvidia, and that's exactly what we talked about. So from Silicon Labs point of view, what we are doing is we're creating, we're providing, in fact, wireless solutions for creating these IoT Edge devices. These IoT Edge devices, lot of those are ambient IoT Edge devices will feed into a system which can do a lot more AI processing, right? And it is getting all the data which is required to make that happen, right? So it's an interesting combination. So we are feeding into that system, as you just indicated. So we have all of these sensors, or edge devices, feeding into a central system which can do a lot more processing and figure out what to do with that whole data, right? So we are enabling that. So this is a pretty interesting if you get a chance. In fact, take a look at that. It's a combination of E key note from Silicon Labs and Nvidia combined as well.

  Steve Statler 38:07

  I will check that out. That's fascinating. And what's interesting about it is you have Nvidia, Quint central chip company working with Silicon Labs, who's a chip technology, and you see complementary aspects of where those companies fit in at a system level. And you know, I would have invited you. My day job is at will yacht, and we interview people that have competitive products all the time, because I think it's all about growing the size of the pizza, not arguing which slice is which. But I would say, you know, what will ya does is complementary to what Silicon Labs does, kind of where they're kind of the very tip of the fingertips of that central nervous system, and you have the hands and the arms, and Nvidia has, has the brain and yeah, and silicon is really the foundation for that, the that complete ecosystem so, and

  Dhiraj Sogani 39:09

  we also have our embedded world in Austin coming up next week. It's the first time it's happening in us. So okay, we have some nice In fact, we are CEO Matt, as well as our CTO, Daniel, they're giving a keynote as well there. So if you get a chance, let's take a look at that as well. So we're, we're going to talk about some of these as well. Very good

  Steve Statler 39:28

  people. Hopefully people will be able to see that online and catch what what happened. I think this episode will probably go out just after that, but, but no doubt the these sessions will be accessible for people. So diraj, were you able to choose three songs that have meaning for you? Oh,

  Dhiraj Sogani 39:47

  yeah, absolutely. In fact, just from a music point of view, I listen to more Hindi music that English music. But certainly I would say 80% plus time is Hindi. But I do listen to a lot of English songs as well. I. Okay? Well, you

  Steve Statler 40:00

  can choose Hindi music. We're not. We've definitely had people that have, but it's whatever you decided is fine. No,

  Dhiraj Sogani 40:07

  no, I've chosen some English music which people can relate to that as well. So I do listen to a lot of songs there, but not as much as the Hindi side of things, right? So a few things which I picked, in fact, I was just thinking about it, what from a family point of you, and really from my past point of view as well. What makes sense? So the first thing which came to mind was, really, when I talk to my kids and when they are running into some problems, they always say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? So this is something, even though the song, if you really look at it, is more related to breakup and all, but in reality, can be translated to anything in life, right? So anything that, if you are going through a tough time, it's fine, it's going to pass, and it's going to make you stronger. It's going to make you fighter. So this is a congra song by Kelly Clarkson, right, who is a Texan born, right? And I'm also in Austin, so it kind of it works well, there as a

  Steve Statler 40:58

  Yeah, very good, very nice choice.

  Dhiraj Sogani 41:01

  So this is an interesting one. The second one, which I kind of relate to because I grew up in India, moved over to you sometime back. But is the song, of course. The guy is from UK, Phil Collins, another day in paradise. Ah, it's a very popular one, of course. And the lyrics are just beautiful over there. And it's an emotional song, right? So suddenly, but it's something that I can relate to. Growing up, I had seen a lot of these cases, so it was I could relate to that song, yeah.

  Steve Statler 41:29

  So you're, you're in Texas now you've spent time in the Bay Area. It looks like, oh,

  Dhiraj Sogani 41:33

  yeah, absolutely. I spent a lot of time in the Bay Area. I spent almost about 20 years in the Bay Area. Then we got acquired by Silicon Labs. So I moved over to Austin after we got acquired.

  Steve Statler 41:43

  And so what we I mean, I my transition from having grown up in England and then growing up or being an adult, professional part of my life here, you know, those experiences are very important to me or just sort of significant. What? What was it like for you? When did you How old were you when you relocated from India to America?

  Dhiraj Sogani 42:12

  I was 21 so in fact, after my Bachelor's, immediately after my Bachelor's, I came over to the Bay Area. Spent almost about 20 years over there. In fact, I even moved back to India. So from Bay Area, I moved back to India for about 10 years, and then I relocated back to Austin after we got acquired. So, so it was a pretty good experience overall, right? So Bay Area was growing at the time. It is still growing, of course, right? Things keep changing all the time in the Bay Area. So transition was pretty smooth over there, no concerns, of course, right? So I liked all the kind of work culture over there. I did my own startup as well over there, which is the standard culture, of course, in the Bay Area, right? So then would

  Steve Statler 42:51

  it have been harder to do that in India? I mean, what? I don't know what the startup scene is in India, it

  Dhiraj Sogani 42:57

  has improved significantly. But at that time, it was not as big, but now it is huge. In India, it's growing significantly right now, absolutely, really interesting being in Austin also. It's a kind of good experience. It's a change, certainly, from Bay Area India to Austin. I love the city as well. Absolutely,

  Steve Statler 43:17

  yeah. I every time I get a new stereo component I always play Phil Collins, just to test out the bass.

  Dhiraj Sogani 43:27

  Yeah, it's a good song. And he has excellent songs, right? So this is something which I love as well. Very good. The third one which I chose was, this was also an interesting one, and this is a movie which I watched a large number of times. I'm sure you have as well The Sound of Music, right? So the song is my favorite thing, so raindrops and roses and discuss on kittens. So this is, I don't know who originally sang the song, but because it was a play first, and then after that, it was converted into a movie. In the movie, I believe Julie Andrews is the one who sang that song, right? So when it's a beautiful song, good thing, it's kind of you need to appreciate little things in life, right? That's really where it is. And there, those are the things that make you happy. That is

  Steve Statler 44:10

  very wise, and makes me appreciate the song even more. And thank you so much, diraj for for choosing excellent songs with excellent thoughts behind them. And thank you very much for coming on our podcast. And thanks

  Dhiraj Sogani 44:26

  a lot, Steve. It was a great conversation. So it's good to see that, in fact, you hey hi. In fact, your day job as well as, in fact, this podcast, you're focusing on some of the right, in fact, some of the technologies which art would take this whole IoT and machine learning kind of forward as well, right? So thanks a lot for having me here, and it was great to talk to you. Thank you.

  Steve Statler 44:48

  So that was diraj sagani, super knowledgeable, and I really had a sense of deja vu and resonance in a lot of the points that he brought up around. A system level thinking, especially certainly the way we in my day job, look at things. And so I feel really good about the fact that we were able to get someone who is really knowledgeable from a really key company in this IOT space to join us on the show. Thank you for joining us on the show. Thank you very much to Aaron Hammack for editing it. I look forward to seeing you all on our next show. In the meantime, please be safe and keep each other well. Thanks again for engaging with us and being part of the used to be through podcast you.