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India Electronics Development Fund (EDF) strengthened the country’s deep-tech ecosystem with an accumulated investment of Rs 1,335.77 crore (approx. $139.23 million) supporting 128 start-ups and tech enterprises. This milestone further demonstrates the government’s commitment to developing Indian capabilities in innovation across electronics, semiconductors, nanoelectronics, and IT. This development reiterates their aim to foster an indigenous self-reliant ecosystem that can eventually enable the creation of a globally competitive technology economy leveraging high innovation, leading edge technology, high-quality human talent to create differentiated technology solutions.​

The Electronics Development Fund (EDF) set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in February 2016 is an Umbrella-Fund of Funds concept. In this model, the EDF invests into other professionally managed venture capital and angel investment funds, called “Daughter Funds.” These Daughter Funds invest into the high- growth potential start ups that build future technologies. As of September 30, 2025, a sum of 257.77 crore of direct equity in eight Daughter Funds by EDF and additional 1,335.77 crore capital invested by Daughter Funds in total of 128 start-ups/ ventures were catalysed in India.

The electronics development fund manages eight SEBI regulated Daughter Funds like Unicorn India Ventures Trust, Aaruha Technology Fund-I, Endiya Seed Co-creation Fund, Karsemven Fund, pi Ventures Fund I, YourNest India VC Fund II, Ventureast Proactive Fund-II and Exfinity Technology Fund Series II. The daughter venture funds pick out startups that can use cutting edge technologies and have high commercial viability.

Having invested in 128 start-ups spanning various frontier technologies, the Electronics Development Fund has become a significant lever for nurturing deep-tech innovation in the country. Over the coming years, the programme will play an even larger role in scaling the nation’s electronics ecosystem, create high-skill, high-value jobs, and advance India’s vision to lead the world in areas like electronics design, semiconductor technologies, and next generation digital innovations.

The post Electronics Development Fund Backs 128 Start-ups with $139.23 Million in Investments appeared first on ELE Times.

Filters are circuits comprising resistors, inductors and capacitors that pass certain frequency bands and attenuate others. Active filters use operational amplifiers (op amps) with resistors and capacitors, whereas passive filters do not include an amplifier.

Active filters have an advantage over passive filters in that they can have gain. The gain factor in an active filter enables higher-order filters as well as a wider range of filter-response characteristics. For example, a band-pass filter with a narrow bandwidth would be challenging to implement with only passive components given the limited gain of passive filters.

The amplifier also allows the filter to drive a load impedance without affecting the filter response, whereas the passive filter response generally changes significantly with loading. Finally, a passive filter may require an inductor, which may add cost and PCB space, compared to an active filter that only requires the amplifier, resistors, and capacitors.

Generally, you can design active filters with simple software programs such as Filter Design Tool. This tool designs an active filter based on your filter specifications, type, response, and topology. The final output for the software tool is a schematic with all the necessary component values. Filter Design Tool does assume that the op amp is ideal, however, and its response can change when using a practical op amp.

This article covers the most common active filter nonidealities, with recommendations on how to mitigate the problem.

Gain-bandwidth limitations

As mentioned previously, the purpose of an active filter is to pass one range of frequencies (pass band) while attenuating another range of frequencies (stop band). The ability of an amplifier to achieve this goal depends heavily on the gain-bandwidth product specification. When using an op amp with insufficient gain bandwidth in an active filter, the stop-band attenuation will not match the expected ideal filter response; specifically, the gain will stop rolling off and will begin to increase rather than decrease.

Figure 1 shows the simulated gain response of a Sallen-Key active filter using three different op-amp models with gain bandwidths ranging from 1.2 MHz to 11 MHz. The term Sallen-Key describes the topology or the specific connections of circuit components. Here, Filter Design Tool recommends a minimum gain bandwidth of 7.1 MHz, so op amps like OPA170 and OPA340 don’t meet that requirement but OPA140 does.

Figure 1 Sallen-Key low-pass filter response is shown for different gain-bandwidth op amps. Source: Texas Instruments

The attenuation in the stop band should continue to roll off at –40dB/decade; however, once the amplifier reaches its gain-bandwidth limit, it stops attenuating. The larger the gain-bandwidth of the op amp, the better the stop-band attenuation.

The figure above showed the effects of insufficient gain bandwidth on a Sallen-Key topology. The Sallen-Key topology is a noninverting type of active filter, while the multiple-feedback topology is an inverting type of active filter. The multiple-feedback topology band-stop attenuation is better than the Sallen-Key topology for low-gain-bandwidth designs.

Figure 2 shows the multiple-feedback response for the same three op amps used in the Sallen-Key example. The multiple-feedback response continues to roll off even after the frequency exceeds the gain-bandwidth limitation of the op amp. For the multiple-feedback circuit, the rolloff transitions from 40dB/decade to 20dB/decade when reaching the bandwidth limitation.

Figure 2 Multiple-feedback low-pass filter response is shown for different gain-bandwidth op amps. Source: Texas Instruments

To summarize, it’s important for active filters to follow the gain-bandwidth limitation given by the filter design software. A higher gain bandwidth will improve the stop-band attenuation, so depending on the range of frequencies that you need to reject, it may be necessary to choose a gain bandwidth 10 or 100 times the recommended minimum.

In cases where it’s not practical to choose an amplifier with a high gain bandwidth, use the multiple-feedback topology because its response is less dependent on gain bandwidth than the Sallen-Key topology.

Source impedance effects

All signal sources have a finite output impedance. A signal source can be commercial test equipment, an amplifier output, or an analog sensor. The output impedance of test equipment or amplifiers is generally very low, while the output impedance of a sensor can be high. Sources with low output impedance will have a minimal effect on filter response.

Conversely, a signal source such as a bridge sensor can have a high output impedance, which may significantly affect the filter response. As with the gain-bandwidth limitations, some filter topologies will be more sensitive to source impedance than others.

Figure 3 compares and contrasts the impact of source impedance on the Sallen-Key and multiple-feedback topologies. In this case, Sallen-Key is much less sensitive to source impedance than multiple feedback. The example plots the response for a 250 Ω, 500 Ω and 1,000 Ω source impedance. The multiple-feedback topology gain is significantly affected by the source impedance, but the effect on the Sallen-Key topology is minimal.

Figure 3 Source-impedance effect on response is displayed for the Sallen-Key and multiple-feedback topologies. Source: Texas Instruments

Component tolerance

Resistor tolerance will affect the cutoff frequencies and gain of active filters. For a low- or high-pass filter, a small shift in the cutoff frequency will not be a significant problem for most applications. For example, if a low-pass filter has an ideal cutoff frequency of 1 kHz but the component tolerance sets the actual frequency to 1.1 kHz, that will not be an issue for most applications.

Band-pass and band-stop filters, conversely, often have very precise bandwidth and center frequency requirements. For example, if a band-stop filter is designed to attenuate a 60-Hz signal, then the center frequency of the stop band should be very close to 60 Hz in order to properly attenuate the 60-Hz signal.

Figure 4 illustrates how component tolerance can affect the center frequency of a band-pass filter. The filter has a center frequency of 1 kHz and a bandwidth of 100 Hz. The circuit was tested using Monte Carlo analysis with good and poor component tolerance (good tolerance: RTOL = 0.1%, CTOL = 1%; poor tolerance: RTOL = 1%, CTOL = 5%). Monte Carlo analysis randomizes the component values according to the assigned tolerance for a set number of runs.

Figure 4 Here is a view of component tolerance impact on band-pass center frequency. Source: Texas Instruments

In this example, you can see much better control of the band-pass center frequency for the more precise (good) tolerance case. For the poor tolerance case, the center frequency is between 932 Hz and 1.106 kHz. The goal of this filter is to pass 1 kHz and reject all other frequencies. For many of the poor-tolerance Monte Carlo runs, a 1-kHz signal would be significantly attenuated because of the shifted center frequency.

The problem with component tolerance is most significant on band-pass and band-stop filters. There are two ways to avoid tolerance issues for these filters. The obvious approach to minimize the error is to choose resistors and capacitors with good tolerance. Generally, precision resistors of 0.1% are easy to find and not that expensive compared to the amplifier cost.

For capacitors, the C0G or film type have the best tolerance, temperature coefficient, and distortion. Unfortunately, these capacitors can be expensive, and the best tolerance is typically 1%. Furthermore, the maximum capacitance for C0G capacitors is generally 100 nF.

Another approach to minimizing the effect of component tolerance is to widen the bandwidth of the filter. The example shown in Figure 4 uses a 100-Hz bandwidth. Running the same example with a 400-Hz bandwidth would show that both the poor and good tolerance cases would pass the 1-kHz center frequency. However, the disadvantage of increasing the bandwidth is that the stop-band attenuation would not be as effective for the wide-bandwidth case.

Noise gain in active filters

All amplifiers and resistors generate noise because of the random motion of electrons inside the resistors and the semiconductor material. It’s possible to calculate this noise mathematically based on the circuit components.

The noise for an op amp is defined as a noise signal source on the noninverting input of the op amp. The gain seen by the noise signal source is called the noise gain. For active filters, the noise gain and noise bandwidth can be significantly different than the signal gain and bandwidth of the filter.

Figure 5 illustrates a multiple-feedback low-pass filter signal gain and noise-gain response. The top schematic shows the signal gain of the filter, while the bottom schematic shows the noise-gain configuration. To simulate noise gain, you simply add a signal source to the noninverting input and short out other voltage sources.

Figure 5 See the noise gain vs. signal gain for a multiple-feedback low-pass filter. Source: Texas Instruments

Comparing the noise gain and signal gain on the Bode plot shows that the noise gain has a much wider and higher frequency response than the signal gain. Sometimes engineers conducting noise analysis of filters assume that the filter transfer function will limit the noise and are surprised that the noise is higher than expected.

This unexpected increase in noise is because the op amp’s intrinsic noise source is located at the noninverting input and not at the signal input. Thus, the increase in noise gain and noise bandwidth causes an increase in output noise that engineers often overlook because they are considering signal gain and not the noise gain.

As the above figure shows, a low-pass active filter has a higher and wider frequency noise gain than the signal gain. This effect is even more significant on band-pass and band-stop filters. Figure 6 compares the noise gain and signal gain of a band-pass filter with a 100-Hz bandwidth. In this case the noise gain is about 46dB (200 V/V) higher than the signal gain.

Figure 6 Noise gain vs. signal gain is shown for a band-pass filter. Source: Texas Instruments

This high noise gain will significantly boost the op-amp noise. But engineers who analyze the circuit by just looking at the signal gain may not expect the higher output noise because of the noise gain.

One way to reduce the impact of noise gain for band-pass and band-stop filters is to increase the filter bandwidth. This is counterintuitive because noise is usually larger for wide-bandwidth circuits. However, for bandpass filters, the noise gain is higher for narrow-bandwidth filters and lower for wide-bandwidth filters. Figure 7 shows how noise gain is higher for the narrow-bandwidth filter.

Figure 7 Noise gain vs. noise bandwidth is shown for band-pass filters. Source: Texas Instruments

Resources for active filters

Fully understanding active filters is a deep and relatively complex subject. You can use Filter Design Tool to design active filters, because this tool and other filter design tools generally assume ideal op-amp characteristics, but the best practice is to confirm your design using a SPICE simulator.

Art Kay is an application engineer in the precision amplifiers team at Texas Instruments. He specializes in support of low noise data acquisition systems and has published a book on intrinsic noise analysis. He also co-published a useful summary of analog engineering relationships and a companion software tool.

Related Content

• Active Filters for Video
• Signal Chain Basics #43: Active Filters
• Software Tool Aids Design of Active Filters
• Designing RC active filters with standard-component values
• Free program designs and analyzes passive and active filters

The post Active filters: Design tips and tricks appeared first on EDN.

Hi everyone! After building and testing my whole 4 bits computer architecture on breadboards, I moved to custom PCB modules, and here is the result! The goal remains the same: keep the architecture simple, modular, and easy to understand, with each part working independently or together as a complete system. The project is divided into 5 independent modules connected by a 4-bit bus Clock module (4-bit counter), ALU + registers module + two 4-bit registers with an ALU capable of performing addition, subtraction, and equality comparison, Instruction register module, Display module and Manual programming module. The idea is to follow a simple RISC philosophy: minimal instructions, simple hardware blocks, and a design where every signal can be observed and understood. After the breadboard prototype phase, these PCB modules make the system cleaner, i'm very proud!! submitted by /u/Fuzzy_Function_1896 [link] [comments]

Розширення партнерства із закладами вищої освіти Пакистану KPI4U-2 пт, 07/31/2026 - 12:02

For its fiscal first-quarter 2027 (ended 27 June 2026), Qorvo Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA (which provides core technologies and RF solutions for mobile, infrastructure and defense applications) has reported revenue of $784.8m, down 2.9% on last quarter’s $808.3m and 4.2% on $818.8m a year ago...

New to hobby electronics. Total tourist. Decided to try my hand at free form circuit design. This is pretty sloppy. But hope to clean up designs as I go, add some elegance. Super fun creative process though, to think about a circuit design in 3D essentially. Simple 555 ic flashing lights circuit but designed as a spider crawling up a tree. Again, not aesthetically pleasing yet. But the circuit works and it was a lot of fun to put together. submitted by /u/Dr_Pavoreal [link] [comments]

The Supervisory Board of ams OSRAM AG of Premstaetten, Austria, and Munich, Germany has approved the reappointment of CEO Aldo Kamper and agreed to a new contract effective 1 October, and running through 30 September 2031. His previous term was set to expire on 31 March 2027. Kamper has been CEO since April 2023...

Just finished my final year engineering project: a custom hardware accelerator that runs YOLOv8n (an object detection AI model) directly on an FPGA, in real time. Instead of running the AI model in software on a CPU/GPU, this is custom digital logic (written in Verilog) that does the computation directly, faster and more power-efficient for edge devices like drones or embedded cameras. Some highlights: Configurable performance, can scale from 1x to 4x throughput depending on the application Uses FP16 precision, tested against lower precision options and it actually performed better for our use case The tricky part was moving data between processing stages without slowing everything down, that took way longer to solve than expected If anyone's into FPGAs, embedded AI, or just wants to see what a final year project like this looks like under the hood: https://github.com/waseemnabi08/yolov8n-cnn-accelerator-fpga submitted by /u/Waseeemnabi [link] [comments]

Agriculture has become one of the fastest-growing applications for autonomous systems. Self-driving tractors, robotic sprayers, autonomous mowers, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are helping growers address labor shortages while improving productivity and reducing operating costs.

Much of this progress has been enabled by satellite navigation. GPS, often combined with real-time kinematic (RTK) corrections, provides the centimeter-level positioning needed for planting, spraying, harvesting, and mapping. In open fields, these systems perform remarkably well.

However, not every agricultural environment offers an unobstructed view of the sky.

As autonomy expands into orchards, vineyards, and other crop operations, satellite navigation alone becomes increasingly unreliable. Dense tree canopies can block and attenuate GPS signals; branches and leaves create multipath reflections; and satellite visibility changes continuously as vehicles move through the rows. The result is inconsistent positioning precisely where autonomous machines must operate with the greatest precision.

For engineers developing autonomous agricultural equipment, maintaining accurate localization during periods of degraded GPS has become one of the industry’s most significant technical challenges.

The hidden challenge of tree canopies

Unlike row crops, orchards present a constantly changing navigation environment.

Vehicles repeatedly transition between open sky and dense canopy. GPS receivers may temporarily lose satellites or receive reflected signals instead of direct ones while traversing through the canopy. Even when the receiver maintains a position fix, accuracy can deteriorate significantly.

These errors quickly affect autonomous operation.

A tractor may slowly drift toward an adjacent row. A sprayer can apply chemicals outside the intended area or miss sections entirely. A robotic mower may require operator intervention after losing its planned trajectory. For UAVs performing inspection or precision spraying missions, degraded positioning can reduce mapping accuracy, compromise flight stability, and result in uneven or incomplete spray coverage.

Because these interruptions occur frequently—but not continuously—they are particularly difficult to manage. Autonomous systems must seamlessly maintain localization while GPS quality fluctuates throughout the mission.

Why sensor fusion matters

Modern autonomous platforms rarely depend on GPS alone. Instead, they combine information from multiple sensors, including cameras, LiDAR, radar, wheel odometry, and inertial measurement units (IMUs). Software continuously fuses these measurements into a single estimate of the vehicle’s position and orientation.

Among these sensors, the IMU plays a unique role because it measures motion directly. Accelerometers measure linear acceleration while gyroscopes measure angular rotation, allowing the navigation system to estimate vehicle movement regardless of external infrastructure.

When GPS becomes unreliable, the inertial system effectively bridges the gap until the satellite signal and positioning recover. The quality of that bridge, however, depends almost entirely on the quality of the inertial sensors themselves.

Not all IMUs perform the same

Most commercial agricultural equipment relies on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based IMUs because they are compact and relatively inexpensive. These sensors work well for many applications but are very sensitive to temperature, vibration, and electromagnetic interference (EMI). They also do not work under various environments and gradually accumulate bias errors that grow over time.

During a brief GPS interruption, the accumulated error may be negligible.

During longer outages beneath dense tree canopy, however, heading errors begin translating directly into position errors. As the vehicle continues moving, localization drift increases until GPS becomes available again.

Historically, engineers solved this problem using fiber optic gyroscopes (FOGs) or ring laser gyroscopes. While highly accurate and insensitive to temperature, vibration, and EMI, FOG-based solutions are generally too large, expensive, and power-hungry for widespread deployment into commercial and agricultural applications.

Recent advances in silicon photonics are beginning to change that tradeoff by making optical gyroscope technology available in much smaller and more practical form factors.

Optical navigation moves into agriculture

One example is Anello Photonics’ silicon photonic optical gyroscope (SiPhOG), which integrates optical gyroscope technology using silicon photonics manufacturing techniques. The technology delivers significantly improved heading stability compared with conventional MEMS-only solutions while remaining compact enough for commercial autonomous platforms.

SiPhOG technology, integrated into the Anello Ground INS system, delivers improved heading stability while meeting the size requirements of autonomous platforms. (Source: Anello Photonics)

Rather than replacing GPS, systems such as the Anello Ground INS combine optical inertial sensing with dual RTK-capable GNSS receivers and advanced sensor fusion. The inertial system maintains accurate motion estimates while GPS measurements fluctuate, allowing navigation performance to remain stable through temporary signal degradation.

The value of this approach becomes especially apparent in orchards.

In field testing conducted in a commercial walnut orchard near Fresno, California, an autonomous ground vehicle equipped with the Anello Ground INS operated beneath dense tree canopy, where satellite visibility was significantly reduced. While a conventional GPS-based navigation solution drifted often by more than 5 meters during the passage through the canopy, the Anello Ground INS maintained sub-half-meter positioning throughout the test.

Although performance always depends on operating conditions and vehicle integration, the demonstration illustrates how improving inertial heading directly improves overall localization when GPS quality deteriorates.

Performance of autonomous ground vehicle navigating beneath dense walnut orchard canopy using the Anello Ground INS. (Source: Anello Photonics)

The same challenge exists in the air

Ground vehicles are not the only agricultural platforms facing degraded GPS. UAVs performing crop scouting, precision spraying, multispectral imaging, and field mapping frequently operate at low altitude near trees, where satellite visibility can also become inconsistent. For these applications, high-quality inertial sensing contributes not only to navigation accuracy but also to flight stability.

For example, the Anello X3 IMU applies the same SiPhOG technology in a compact IMU designed for UAVs and other autonomous aerial systems. By providing more stable inertial measurements during temporary GPS degradation, the X3 supports reliable flight control and more consistent navigation in challenging agricultural environments. Learn more about the benefits of inertial technology for precision agriculture here.

Looking beyond GPS

Agricultural autonomy will continue to rely on GNSS, and RTK will remain an essential component of precision farming. However, as autonomous machines move beyond open fields into orchards, vineyards, forests, and other GPS-challenged environments, satellite positioning alone is no longer sufficient.

The future of autonomous agriculture will depend on resilient sensor fusion architectures that combine GNSS with increasingly capable inertial technologies. Advances in integrated silicon photonics, enabling new, small, integrated optical gyroscopes, are making navigation performance once reserved for high-end aerospace systems accessible to the commercial agricultural market.

While GPS has transformed precision agriculture, the next leap forward will be driven by technologies that enable autonomous machines to operate reliably when satellite signals are degraded or unavailable. As resilient inertial navigation becomes an integral part of modern sensor fusion architectures, autonomous tractors, robotic implements, and UAVs will deliver greater accuracy, reliability, and operational confidence, bringing agriculture one step closer to true, all-condition autonomy.

The post Why autonomous agriculture needs inertial navigation appeared first on EDN.

Finland-based laser developer and manufacturer Vexlum — which was spun off from Tampere University of Technology’s Optoelectronics Research Centre in 2017 and develops and manufactures high-power semiconductor vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) technology systems — has announced the appointment of Dr Stefan Truppe as managing director of Vexlum UK, and the establishment of a dedicated laboratory in London, positioning the firm at the center of the UK’s rapidly growing quantum ecosystem...

As OEMs in high-reliability industries, including automotive, industrial, and military/aerospace, move to next-generation designs, they are looking for interconnects that not only offer high reliability and ruggedness but also greater design flexibility and miniaturization. The availability of more product options and easier integration and installation are also key requirements.

The combination of greater flexibility and miniaturization is delivering space and cost savings across rugged designs while supporting next-generation systems, such as vehicle platforms that are packing more and more electronic components into space-constrained devices.

Here is a selection of connectors and cable assemblies introduced over the past year that meet the right balance of features for these application trends. These include software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and zonal electronic/electrical (E/E) architectures; next-generation military/aerospace systems and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); and industrial automation systems that need greater flexibility and adaptability.

Automotive connectors and cables

Molex recently expanded its HSAutoLink interconnect portfolio with the launch of the HSAutoLink G, comprised of terminals, connectors, PCB headers, and cables. It joins the existing rugged, high-speed HSAutoLink, HSAutoLink II, and HSAutoLink C families.

The connector system provides multi-gigabit Ethernet connections of up to 25 Gbits/s in a compact, USCAR-compatible interface, making it suited to address rising bandwidth demands driven by advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), radar, LiDAR, zonal architecture, immersive displays, and central compute modules.

By extending support with Ethernet connections up to 25 Gbits/s, these interconnects can meet the high bandwidth requirements in SDVs and autonomous mobility platforms, Molex said.

Fitting within existing USCAR Ethernet interfaces, the HSAutoLink G enables future-proof product designs that reduce space and weight in compact modules while streamlining system integration and upgrades. Key features include advanced electromagnetic-interference (EMI) shielding and controlled differential impedance to maintain signal integrity for high-speed communications in dense environments. This helps prevent signal failures, validation delays, and costly design changes, the company said.

Other features include an anti-stubbing design that protects the contacts during the mating process to reduce the risk of mis-mating, as well as the addition of multiple, uniform ground-contact points to enhance EMI suppression for higher reliability.

Molex’s HSAutoLink G automotive Ethernet connector system (Source: Molex)

As automakers shift to SDVs and zonal E/E architectures, TE Connectivity (TE) has introduced a portfolio of interconnects for automotive electronic control units (ECUs). The Inside Device Connectivity portfolio is designed to support the next generation of vehicle platforms. The purpose-built portfolio includes board-to-board, wire-to-board, flex-to-board, and wire-to-wire connector solutions for compact, high-performance applications.

The Inside Device Connectivity portfolio is tailored to the specific needs of SDVs, enabling scalable and standardized connector configurations while reducing weight, packaging space, and integration complexity, TE said.

At the same time, these interconnects are optimized for EMI-sensitive and vibration-intensive environments with high misalignment tolerance and ruggedness against vibration, contamination, temperature shifts, and humidity. Other features include current capacity up to 45 A for wire-to-board and up to 18 A for board-to-board; a pitch of 0.4 mm to 10.16 mm with up to 180 pins; and crimp, IDC, and mass terminations.

These connectors target different application areas in an SDV, including ECUs, power conversion (on-board charger inverters and DC/DC converters), battery systems (battery, cell module controller, and battery management system), high-performance computers, ADAS (radar and LiDAR), and black-box systems (such as lighting).

TE’s Inside Device Connectivity portfolio (Source: TE Connectivity)

Interconnects for military, aerospace, and UAVs

Samtec Inc. recently expanded its SMPM cable-to-board precision RF connector family with small-form-factor threaded cable-to-board-mated sets, targeting high-vibration environments. Suited for applications such as military, aerospace, and communication applications, the connector assemblies feature a threaded SMPM MIL-STD-348 interface with a retractable threaded coupling nut.

High-vibration environments can exceed the retention capabilities of traditional push-on RF interconnects, Samtec explained, requiring a more secure and robust connection.

The threaded SMPM cable-to-board-mated connector sets—including the RF047-A and RF086 millimeter-wave, low-loss cable assembly families handling up to 67 GHz, as well as the SMPMT threaded, SMPM millimeter-wave board-mount plugs available up to 60 GHz—are designed with enhanced mechanical strength. They feature full detent or smooth bore for varying retention forces and offer mixed technology board termination, which provides resistance to mechanical stress and supports high frequency.

The RF047-A is a 0.047-inch, low-loss, flexible microwave cable assembly (29 AWG) with an extremely small bend radius of 3.18 mm. The RF086 is a 0.086-inch, low-loss, flexible cable (23 AWG) with a bend radius of 8.9 mm. Both operate up to 125°C. A variety of end options are available for application-specific customization.

These precision RF connectors are available from stock. The RF047-A cable assembly and SMPMT threaded plugs are part of the Samtec Reserve program with one-day shipment.

Samtec’s threaded SMPM cable-to-board-mated connector sets (Source: Samtec Inc.)

For avionics and UAVs, Times Microwave Systems launched its Levitate cable assembly line for both military and commercial RF systems. Designed for efficiency, weight savings, and electrical performance, these ultra-lightweight cable assemblies with minimal loss are suited for avionics applications across UAV Groups 1 through 5.

Times Microwave Systems claims that the Levitate assemblies provide the lightest weight per unit of loss available on the market today, enabling engineers to reduce overall system mass without compromising RF performance. They cover a range of airborne applications, including flight control, communications, and surveillance.

Providing a balance between cost, performance, and availability, the Levitate cable assembly is available in multiple sizes, including the LVT047, LVT086, LVT141, LVT157, and LVT196. All assemblies are engineered for dual use in military and commercial RF systems. The flexible construction of the LVT047, LVT086, and LVT141 assemblies is suited for in-the-box applications, and the ultra-lightweight LVT157 and LVT196 support critical RF runs connecting antennas to LRUs.

Times Microwave Systems’ Levitate cable assembly line (Source: Times Microwave Systems)

Connectors for industrial automation

Aimed at delivering greater design flexibility and simplicity, binder USA LP, a subsidiary of binder Group, recently announced a new generation of hybrid connectors for industrial automation. The B23 series combines power supply and shielded data transmission in one compact connector and enables Ethernet transmission rates of up to 100 Mbits/s.

The B23 connector is built for one-cable-automation concepts, addressing key market requirements that call for a reduced cabling effort and increased data rates in industrial systems. This simplifies integration and system architectures.

The hybrid connector reduces cabling effort by enabling power and communication via a single interface, which also reduces installation times and potential sources of error, binder said. One example cited is drive technology, in which servo motors and drive systems can be connected with just one cable. It can also be used in modular machine and plant architectures, as well as robotics and flexible manufacturing systems.

The B23 connector also targets the trend toward decentralized automation that requires rugged, pluggable connections and a high degree of protection. Key specs include power transmission up to 28 A at up to 630 V and shielded Ethernet/EtherCAT (according to Cat 5) data transmission up to 100 Mbits/s. Other features include a bayonet quick-locking system for secure connections, screw-clamp termination for field use, and IEC 61076-2-118 standardization.

Meeting both field and device integration requirements, the B23 is available in a field-attachable version and as a panel-mount connector for device installation. Versions with single-wire termination and THT contacts are available.

Binder’s B23 connector (Source: binder USA LP)

Hirose Electric Co. Ltd. expanded its high-density BGA mezzanine connector portfolio with a COM-HPC standard-compatible version that supports PCIe Gen5 (32 GT/s), Gen6 (64 GT/s PAM4), and 100-Gb Ethernet (4 × 25 Gb). The IT18 Series can be used in industrial automation, medical imaging, and T&M equipment.

The BGA mezzanine connector features an ultra-high-density pin count of 400 positions in a 0.635-mm pitch, delivering high-speed transmission in a low profile. Stacking heights include 5 mm and 10 mm. It also features high crosstalk suppression, including far-end-crosstalk cancellation technology.

The open-field design (open pin-field grid array) of the connector is adaptable to various layouts, allowing for greater flexibility across different applications. Because pins are not locked into a fixed pattern, customers can route signals, grounds, and power to improve density and performance, which also helps with signal-integrity optimization, Hirose said.

Featuring a rugged design, the IT18 Series connector uses a metal cap to reduce warpage and protect contacts from flux. The cap minimizes reflow defects by suppressing deformation during heating and protecting against foreign particles in the environment, the company said. Other key features include a large guide to ensure proper mating and retention tabs that prevent cracks in solder balls.

Hirose’s IT18 Series BGA mezzanine connector (Source: Hirose Electric Co. Ltd.)

The post Optimize hi-rel designs with rugged, flexible interconnects appeared first on EDN.

Full-featured, high-priced products address many users’ needs. But free and low-cost options, sometimes for augmentation purposes, other times operating standalone, also have their place.

As regular readers may already have noticed, I regularly embed FCC certification IDs in my teardowns and other writeups, complete with links to the associated FCC website pages for additional documentation, images, and other information on the products I’m discussing. Long ago, so far in the past that I no longer remember where and when, I came across someone else (iFixit, mebbe?) who was using shortcut URLs of the following format instead of fuller URLs:

http://www.fcc.io/INSERT_FCC_CERTIFICATION_ID

You can tell how old the service is by the fact that it still works using the non-secure version of HTTP. In fact, for a long time, my potentially faulty recollection is that the “https” version of the URL didn’t work at all, although I just checked and it’s now supported, too.

I long assumed this shortcut interstitial URL service was run by the FCC itself. However, motivated by curiosity one day, I entered http://www.fcc.io standalone in my web browser. Here’s what I found on the home page:

FCC.io

What?

A simple search and URL shortener for FCC ID queries.

Why?

I can never find the search form on the FCC site, so fcc.io should be easy enough to remember. Fcc.io provides a way to share FCC ID searches with other people via links, email, IRC, or IM.

How?

The URL scheme is simple:

• https://fcc.io/”FCC ID”

Try these:

• https://fcc.io/NPI
• https://fcc.io/NPI71646
• https://fcc.io/grantee/lego

To-do

Other search suggestions?

Email to dominicgs@gmail.com

Disclaimer

Neither this site, nor its author, are affiliated with the FCC in any way.

Running on GitHub pages

Good for you, dominicdgs@gmail.com (who appears to be Dominic Spill, formerly “next door” to me in Evergreen, CO per his Github page and now with Apple in Cupertino, CA per LinkedIn)!

Another example, which I briefly introduced recently, are the open source FreeFileSync and related RealTimeSync utilities developed by the FreeFileSync project, and supporting Linux, MacOS and Windows systems alike. The ability to automatically backup or sync (the latter both uni- and bi-directionally) the contents of one or multiple directories to another storage device (a USB-C tethered RAID 1 external HDD array, in my case) became critical to my workflow when I added associate editor duties to my longstanding contributing editor relationship with EDN. The two-utility package has worked without a hitch in the two-plus months (as I write this) since I’ve installed them, and I anticipate further non-drama functionality in the future, too.

Per these and other examples to come, this post will therefore be a to-developer “love letter” regarding software packages and services that have become essential to me, and for personal and/or professional reasons. As you continue reading, think about what similar examples you can derive from your own life. You’ll have an opportunity to share them with us, too, at the end.

Enhanced text editors

MacOS comes bundled with the TextEdit graphical text editor, with others (Nano and Vim) also accessible via the Terminal command line. And if a beefier word processor is what you’re looking for, there’s always the also-gratis Pages. So why on earth would I pay $59.99 (new) or $29.99 (previous-version upgrade) for Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit? Check out this list of features. Or see what fellow fan John Gruber has to say about it, notably in a 30-year retrospective summary published four-plus years ago.

From my standpoint, the ability to automatically re-open one-to-multiple tabs’ worth of content, regardless of whether it’s/they’ve been saved recently (or at all, for that matter), after program shutdowns and restarts and even full operating system reboots, and as long as I haven’t manually closed a tab, is by itself worth the price tag. It’s “saved my bacon” on innumerable occasions.

If you’d like a free “taste” of the full-featured version, a 30-day evaluation time period is supported. And “Free Mode”, the successor to the original freeware TextWrangler software from the same company, will extend the gratis party to eternity if you don’t need access to any of the program’s paid-only capabilities.

What about Windows? Here the seemingly most common enhancement to the bundled graphical Notepad and command line Microsoft Edit editors is Notepad++ (Github link), which is free and open source (not to mention 20+ years old!). Its primary developer is Don Ho; another set of developers led by Andrey Letov recently ported it to MacOS while initially retaining the original name (and notably, without getting Ho’s permission first) and was subsequently compelled by both legal threats and broader community outrage to rename it to Nextpad++ (again, Github link).

And Linux? The already-bundled text editors are generally more robust in this case, befitting this operating system’s comparative “power user” community, but a diversity of add-on options unsurprisingly also exists. Linux users out there, I welcome your suggestions in the comments!

Networked TV services

Windows 7 reached End of Life (EOL) and officially lost extended support on January 14, 2020. Windows 8.1 followed it out the door on January 10, 2023. With them went official support for Media Center, a Microsoft-developed digital video recorder and media player application that first appeared within a special-purpose Windows XP edition in 2005.

I’ve been running various versions of Media Center since the very beginning, initially to ingest broadcast television coming over NTSC and (later) ATSC antenna feeds, later transitioning to cable television feeds in conjunction with a networked CableCARD receiver, and for subsequent display on televisions in conjunction with both Xbox game consoles and standalone Media Center Extender devices.

And I’ve continued doing so even though, as previously noted, the operating system foundations are no longer supported, not to mention the fact that the service’s built-in electronic program guide was discontinued on January 14, 2020. How? The alternative program guide data I’m tapping into is SchedulesDirect, a non-profit “community” (with, as far as know, exactly one active developer employee) and a $35 yearly membership fee.

And how do I get the SchedulesDirect-sourced data into Media Center? That’s where EPG123 (GitHub link), another one-person development project, comes in. Gary An has worked tirelessly for the past decade-plus (ever since Microsoft switched from Zap2it to Rovi as its guide data provider, even prior to shutting down its EPG service entirely) to create and maintain EPG123, fixing bugs, responding to SchedulesDirect service evolutions, and the like.

He’s also a regular support presence on the community forum at The Green Button website. And while he’s happy to accept donations, he doesn’t charge a penny for his software. Bless you, Gary!

An essential email add-on

Mozilla’s Thunderbird has been my personal email client of choice for nearing two decades now (just as the organization’s Firefox browser is for web access…and SeaMonkey is for HTML editing…), and I access email via POP3 so that I can exclusively retain an archive locally. So, you can probably imagine how voluminous my Thunderbird database is at this point. Everything’s (fairly) neatly organized into per-topic folders, mind you, but there are probably thousands of them at this point, in a multi-email account (plus RSS) and multi-level nested arrangement.

That’s why I heavily rely on an add-on called Nostalgy (GitHub link), which enables me to move (or copy) incoming emails from my inbox to a desired target folder, and more broadly from any source folder to another, using only convenient keystrokes. Why Nostalgy hasn’t been adopted by and natively included in Thunderbird by this point is baffling to me, both because of its inherent benefits and because the constant changes to the email client’s database structure and other factors make maintaining it a headache for a third-party developer alternative.

Speaking of which, the add-on was originally developed and maintained by Alain Frisch. Source code maintenance and enhancement duties were later taken up by Klaus Buecher, who renamed it Nostalgy++. It’s an oft-thankless task, as I gather from the commentary that accompanies both new-release notes and periodic requests for donations. But to that point, and as with EPG123, fiscal compensation is voluntary, not obligatory. Long may you continue to code, Klaus, and thank you for your software service!

Squashing a longstanding File Explorer bug

This last one’s a doozy. For decades now, through innumerable version updates small and large alike, Windows has proven itself incapable of permanently retaining user-requested changes to File Manager settings, either folder-specific or all-encompassing, and related to both file sorting and content display strategies.

I might, for example (and regularly do, in fact) tell it that I no longer want it to cluster together chronologically similar groups of files within a folder, instead displaying them solely in a basic alphabetized list format, and to more globally revise this particular setting. Or to tone down the displayed thumbnail size in image-related folders.

The requested changes “stick”…as long as I don’t move to a different folder, that is. Maybe, in fact, they remain as I’d previously requested the next time (or, pushing my luck, few times) I return to that folder. But usually, they immediately revert to defaults. And my random likelihood of ongoing settings-change-sticking success is even less if I quit and then re-open File Explorer, not to mention after a system reboot. Sooner or later, Microsoft insists that its default way is best.

Back in March, the company finally publicly acknowledged the problem (along with plenty of others) and promised that remedies were on the way. I’ll believe it when I see it. And I’m not going to wait. I’d already found, and happily am still using, an independently developed “fix” for these and other File Explorer quirks called WinSetView:

WinSetView provides an easy way to set Windows File Explorer default folder views. For example, if you want Details view, with a particular selection of column headings enabled across all folders, then WinSetView will do that for you.

For more details, please see the extended summary.

WinSetView is open source. It’s inobtrusive, either running portably or fully installed. It does what it promises, nothing more or less, and changes are easily reversible. And it’s free. Kudos to you, developers LesFerch and Thysbelon. You’ve enabled me to (arguably) cling to my sanity.

Now it’s your turn

These are all just examples, apparently particularly notable ones, because they’ve risen to the top of the list brainstormed and assembled in, and subsequently coming out of, my noggin. I’m confident that the catalog as it currently exists isn’t comprehensive, for me (I may think of and add one-to-a-few more entries before this piece is published, in fact) and certainly more globally. Which is where you come in.

What software and services, specifically focused in function and freeware-or-low cost, have you come across that help simplify your life? Share your thoughts in the comments, please, for both your own resultant fame and others’ consideration, adoption and benefit. Thanks!

—Brian Dipert is the associate editor, as well as a contributing editor, at EDN.

Related Content

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• Open Source: Keep It Current Or Suffer The Consequences
• Open source: not always a successful course

The post Unsung software and services heroes ease our days appeared first on EDN.

India is stepping up investments in key EV technologies. The South Asian country is speeding up its investments in key electric vehicle (EV) technologies while planning to boost a self-dependent and globally relevant EV manufacturing ecosystem. Driven by various central government initiatives, state government programs, and private sector investments, India attracted commitments for around US$25.6 billion worth of investments across battery manufacturing, advanced battery chemistries, powertrains, charging infrastructure, and technologies for battery and electric powertrains. These investments will help scale up domestic manufacturing and reduce dependence on imported components.

The Government of India launched multiple schemes to boost domestic manufacturing of the Electric Vehicles (EV) ecosystem through production-linked Incentive (PLI) Schemes for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) and battery storage, as well as the PM E-Drive program to promote charging. The PM E-Drive program aims to promote charging for automobiles and auto components. Along with manufacturers both domestically and overseas, these schemes lead to localization of EVs’ key technologies.

The post India Accelerates Core EV Technology Investments to Strengthen Domestic Manufacturing Ecosystem appeared first on ELE Times.

High-voltage batteries for e-mobility have become highly complex systems consisting of numerous components. The market for these batteries is becoming increasingly dynamic, and technologies are constantly evolving: innovative battery cells with new chemical compositions are being introduced. Automotive suppliers and manufacturers therefore require a tailored and flexible testing strategy for battery cell quality assurance, both in development and in production. Only in this way can suppliers compete in the market with more powerful batteries, higher levels of automation, and optimized workflows.

To address these challenges, GÖPEL electronic has developed a high-performance and quickly configurable battery cell tester that features a modular design and high flexibility. This allows for the quick and transparent determination of quality, charging efficiency, and reliability in up to five battery cells simultaneously. The tester complements the product portfolio, which includes, among other things, GÖPEL electronic’s EOL battery test system, which performs comprehensive test routines for the entire battery pack.

The new battery cell tester covers standard safety tests that evaluate the condition of the cells: The OCV (Open Circuit Voltage) value indicates the voltage of a battery without a load (open circuit) and serves as an indicator of its state of charge. For the ACIR (Alternating Current Internal Resistance) measurement, the tester uses a test method to determine the internal resistance of the battery cells. This internal resistance under alternating current provides information about the performance, state of aging, and quality of the battery cell.

The main advantage of the new, smaller tester from GÖPEL electronic lies in its fast and reproducible test results: By interfacing with automated equipment, highly efficient batch testing can be performed in a matter of seconds. This is ideal, for example, for incoming inspection or cell grouping.

The post Fast and Flexible Test Device for Safety and Functional Testing of Battery Cells appeared first on ELE Times.

Ather Energy has started rolling out Pothole+ Alerts for customers with Gen 2 and above scooters, including the Ather 450 Apex, 450X and Rizta Z. The feature leverages data generated by Ather’s connected scooter fleet to warn riders about potholes, broken road sections, uneven surfaces and speed breakers ahead while navigating. It also goes a step further, suggesting the smoothest route before a ride begins, beyond just the fastest one.

Announcing the rollout on X, Ather Co-founder and CEO Tarun Mehta said the feature had been nearly nine years in the making. “The challenge was never the idea. It was the data,” Mehta wrote. He explained that building the feature required a large connected fleet travelling the same roads over time, allowing Ather to generate the scale of fleet intelligence needed to accurately identify road conditions.

Every Ather scooter comes equipped with onboard compute and connectivity, enabling the company to continuously gather real-world riding data and deliver new capabilities through over-the-air software updates. According to Mehta, Pothole+ Alerts represents one of the first large-scale applications of this connected ecosystem, transforming millions of kilometres of ride data into a feature that benefits riders every day.

Integrated into the scooter’s navigation experience, Pothole+ Alerts provides advance notifications for potholes, broken road sections, uneven surfaces and speed breakers. Alerts are displayed on the dashboard and can also be delivered through the scooter’s speakers, the Ather Halo smart helmet or any compatible Bluetooth headset.

The rollout reflects Ather’s continued focus on building connected features powered by real-world riding data. Mehta added that Pothole+ Alerts is just the beginning, with the company planning to build more rider experiences on top of its growing road intelligence dataset.

The post Ather Energy Rolls Out Pothole+ Alerts, Built on Connected Fleet Intelligence appeared first on ELE Times.

Aeluma Inc of Goleta, CA, USA has signed a letter of intent (LOI) for up to $30m of proposed funding under the CHIPS and Science Act, which is administered by the US Department of Commerce. The award will support R&D on the firm’s scalable, non-InP (indium phosphide) semiconductor manufacturing platform for photonics...

AXT Inc of Fremont, CA, USA — which makes gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium phosphide (InP) and germanium (Ge) substrates and raw materials at plants in China — has entered into a definitive agreement with Lumentum Operations LLC of San Jose, CA, USA (which designs and makes photonic products for optical networks and lasers for industrial and consumer markets) for the supply and capacity reservation of indium phosphide wafer substrates...

Стипендія КМУ за видатні заслуги у сфері вищої освіти Віталію Дідковському KPI4U-2 чт, 07/30/2026 - 10:00

Here’s a question your grandfather could have answered: Would you rather have a million dollars today or a penny that doubles every day for a month? Most people take the million. The penny reaches $5 million by day 30.

Human intuition is simply bad at exponential math. We think in straight lines, and compounding curves surprise us every time. Now run that intuition in reverse.

An AI coding agent that’s right 98% of the time sounds impressive. And 98% is a generous assumption, probably better than reality for most tasks. But apply that accuracy across 34 steps with no verification in the loop, and you’ve crossed the coin-flip line. More likely wrong than right. The math is 0.98^34 = 0.505.

The surprise is the same one your grandfather felt. And in a safety-critical development environment, the consequences are not a missed investment opportunity.

Sophisticated agentic systems don’t run open-loop. They compile, test, lint, and self-verify at each step, and the public record shows it works.

Andreas Kling ported Ladybird’s LibJS engine from C++ to Rust using AI agents across hundreds of human-directed prompts, producing 25,000 lines of Rust with zero regressions across 65,359 tests and byte-for-byte identical bytecode output. The human was in the loop at every decision point, which is precisely why it worked.

The Bun JavaScript runtime went further. AI Weekly highlighted that Claude agents rewrote roughly one million lines of Zig to Rust autonomously across 6,755 commits, passing 99.8% of its existing test suite. It also left 13,044 unsafe Rust blocks, where a comparable handwritten project would have 73. A passing test suite doesn’t surface this safety debt—it stops a safety-critical certification in its tracks.

Both of these projects succeeded because verification ran inside the loop at every step. They also illustrate exactly where the limits are. In most software development contexts, the floor is an efficiency problem. Verification catches it, the agent retries, and the process converges. Expensive in tokens and time, but recoverable.

In safety-critical development, the calculus is different. This is where functional correctness testing and safety-critical qualification part ways. Bun passed its own test suite. Ladybird produced byte-for-byte identical bytecode. Those are impressive results. But they are not safety cases. ISO 26262, DO-178C, and IEC 62304 don’t recognize self-generated test results as qualified verification evidence.

Your braking system software doesn’t get partial credit for passing tests it wrote for itself. Your insulin pump firmware isn’t certified on a curve. The standards assume deterministic tools producing verifiable evidence—qualified tools, documented configurations, and traceable outputs. An agentic workflow that self-verifies is better than one that doesn’t. But in safety-critical development, it still isn’t enough.

What safety-critical compliance actually requires isn’t vague.

ISO 26262 mandates a documented safety plan, requirements with bidirectional traceability from hazard analysis through to verified implementation, and evidence that coding guidelines—typically MISRA C or CERT C—were enforced by a qualified tool using a qualified configuration.

DO-178C adds structural coverage requirements. At the highest criticality levels, every statement, every branch, and every condition and its complement must be exercised by tests that are themselves traced to requirements.

IEC 62304 requires a software development lifecycle with documented verification activities at each phase. In every case, the evidence must be generated as the work happens rather than reconstructed afterward—and not self-certified by the tool that produced the artifact being evaluated.

The open-loop pipeline isn’t an edge case; it’s what every team promises to fix after the next release. A requirements review is handed to a code generator, a documentation tool, and a traceability updater with testing saved for the end. That’s not an agentic worst case. That’s a pipeline. At 98% per-step accuracy across 34 stages, you’ve crossed the coin-flip line before you’ve run a single test.

The answer isn’t a better model. It’s the same answer safety-critical engineers have always given to unreliable processes. You don’t improve your way to acceptable; you gate your way there.

Static analysis enforces expected coding patterns and flags dangerous anti-patterns like uninitialized memory, undefined behavior, and violations of MISRA or CERT rules that exist precisely because they’ve caused failures before.

Unit tests verify that individual components behave as specified under known conditions. And coverage in safety-critical development isn’t a spot-checking exercise. DO-178C requires 100% MC/DC coverage at DAL A, and ISO 26262 requires the same at ASIL D. Every line. Every branch. Every condition.

Each gate resets the accumulated uncertainty back toward zero before the next stage compounds it further. That’s not a new idea. It’s how you build software that people’s lives depend on.

The question AI raises isn’t whether to use gates. It’s whether the gates you already have are positioned to catch what an AI agent introduces and whether you’ve thought carefully about where in the workflow the uncertainty is actually accumulating.

The gates were designed for a world where code has an author who made deliberate choices. A human developer who writes an uninitialized variable made a mistake. A human developer who skips a boundary check made a tradeoff. Static analysis flags both—the developer understands the finding in context, and the correction is made by someone who knows what the code is supposed to do. The evidence trail is intact. The intent is recoverable.

An AI agent doesn’t make mistakes in that sense. It produces outputs that are statistically consistent with its training: plausible, often correct, and occasionally wrong in ways that look right.

The static analysis tool will still flag the MISRA violation. The unit test will still fail on the boundary condition. But the developer reviewing the finding is now one step removed from the original intent because there wasn’t original intent in the human sense. There was a probability distribution. And when you ask the agent why it made that choice, the answer is not recoverable in any form a certification auditor can use.

The gates catch the artifact. They don’t reconstruct the argument. In a safety case, you need both, and one of them must have been generated as the decisions were made, not reverse engineered from the output afterward.

The consumer technology press calls it “hallucination,” which means the AI confidently states something wrong. This term captures the symptom, but not the mechanism.

In safety-critical engineering the mechanism is what matters. ISO/PAS 8800, the emerging automotive standard for AI safety that the broader embedded industry is watching closely as a template, uses the term “functional insufficiency”: an unexpected error under specific conditions not adequately represented during development. As EDN noted, for engineers building software for medical devices, industrial automation, rail, aerospace, and defense, dismissing this document as “just for cars” would be a missed opportunity.

The distinction matters. Hallucination implies the system invented something from nothing. Functional insufficiency describes something more precise. The system performed exactly as its training data suggested it should, and the training data didn’t cover this case.

You can’t fix a hallucination by improving the model. You can’t fix a functional insufficiency that way either. What you can do is bound it, monitor it, and build an architecture that prevents it from propagating into a safety-critical decision unchecked.

None of this is an argument against AI in safety-critical development. These industries already have the architectural foundations to manage it responsibly. That argument is already lost, and it should be. AI tools are accelerating development, surfacing defects earlier, and handling the kind of repetitive verification work that exhausts engineers and introduces its own error rate.

The question was never whether AI would enter these industries. It’s here. The question is whether the engineering discipline surrounding it will keep pace.

Compound uncertainty doesn’t care about your intentions or your vendor’s benchmark scores. A 98% accurate agent in a 34-step open-loop workflow has already crossed the coin-flip line. Those numbers don’t improve because the use case is important or the schedule is tight.

Compound uncertainty in multi-step workflows. Even with 95% per-step accuracy, overall success rate declines sharply as the number of workflow steps (N) increases—not because model performance degrades, but because the workflow itself compounds error. Source: Parasoft

What does improve the outcome is treating AI in safety-critical development the way these industries have always treated unreliable components: with gates, evidence, and documented reasoning that survives an audit.

The standards that govern medical devices, aviation software, and automotive systems were written for a deterministic world. But the principles they encode—rigorous verification, traceable decisions, complete coverage, and structured safety arguments—turn out to be exactly the right response to a world where probabilistic behavior slipped into the development process before anyone checked its credentials.

ISO/PAS 8800 is the automotive industry’s first formal attempt to extend those principles into AI-specific territory. Other domains are watching. The framework outlined in the embedded world—manage uncertainty, bound it, argue it, and monitor it—applies whether you’re building firmware for a ventilator or a flight control system or an autonomous vehicle.

You will never eliminate functional insufficiency from an AI system. However, you can build an architecture that catches it before it becomes a safety event. That’s not a limitation of technology. It’s just engineering.

Arthur Hicken is a senior software evangelist at Parasoft.

Ricardo Camacho is director of product strategy for embedded and safety critical compliance at Parasoft.

Related Content

• AI Safety Moves to the Forefront
• Specifying Objectives is Key to AI Safety
• Can We Trust AI in Safety Critical Systems?
• Safe Automated Driving Starts with Architecture
• The impact of AI/ML on qualifying safety-critical software

The post Compound uncertainty: AI’s hidden risk in safety-critical development appeared first on EDN.

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