Meeting Infineon’s MCU Veteran Steve Tateosian During His Recent India Visit

Steve Tateosian, Senior Vice President of Microcontrollers, Infineon Technologies, was recently in India. The Volt Post’s Group Editor, Niloy Banerjee gets alongside to unwrap Steve’s recent visit to India, especially visiting Infineon India’s R&D site for the development of our Microcontroller Unit (MCU) solutions. During the Volt-Age interview, Steve Tateosian highlights Infineon’s advancements in generative AI at the edge, Microcontroller portfolio, challenges of traditional forms of touch sensing, inside company’s strategy to advance with PSOC families and much in the edited Volt-Full excerpts below.

Steve, you recently visited India. What brought you here?

I’m happy that I was able to visit India again, it is always great pleasure to meet all our team members here in India. But, of course, India plays an important role for Infineon, too. Infineon India is a critical R&D site for the development of our Microcontroller Unit (MCU) solutions, involving system and chip design, product test facilities, and software engineering and development.

The country’s fast-growing economy and increasing demand for our products make it an essential market for us.

How Infineon foresee the dynamic advancements in generative AI at the edge and how Infineon is advancing its microcontroller portfolio while adhering to strong physical and logical protection.

Delivering generative AI on the edge is expected to offer exciting new possibilities for developers and experiences for edge device users, with applications ranging from personal to industrial. Just to mention some of the highlights:

• Dynamic Model Interaction: One of the interesting aspects of generative AI is its dynamic nature. In the future, when generative AI models are deployed on embedded devices, we will be able to better adapt to the specific realities of those devices.
• Responsive User Interactions: In everyday user scenarios, running generative AI on edge devices can create a more personalized and efficient experience where the interactive model responds to user requests or data in real time, analyzes their preferences and patterns, and adapts or optimizes accordingly.
• Proactive Maintenance: Running generative AI on the edge can make it possible to constantly monitor machinery in real time, analyze error logs, and predict maintenance needs, thereby improving operational efficiency and preventing breakdowns.
• Hybrid Solutions: Combining Edge and Cloud AI can be a cost-effective and beneficial solution, allowing you to benefit from both worlds: you save on expenses while still utilizing powerful generative AI for informed decision-making.

Although it will take some time for generative AI to truly exist on the edge, the advancements we need to get there are ongoing as models and processing power become increasingly more efficient.

We also anticipate that developers will come up with new and creative ways to use generative AI, pushing the boundaries of its applications.

Strong physical and logical protection is increasingly important for edge devices.

• First, we can link security of the code running on the device to operational safety. If the code cannot be trusted, then system safety could also be jeopardized.
• Second, user privacy – one of the key advantages of edge AI is security of user private data. For edge AI, the inherent advantage is the data never needs to leave the device.  However, to fulfill this expectation of privacy, the device itself must be secured and robust against attacks.
• Third, we can link device security to IP protection. We see this become increasingly important as the value of the ML models on these devices can be significant, this is not so much driven by the effort or know-how required to create the model, but the data collection and management and model tuning effort.  As a result, it is increasingly important for developers to protect this IP as it is deployed in edge devices.

What are the challenges of traditional forms of touch sensing?

Traditional touch sensing is primarily based on capacitive and resistive technologies. As a leader in capacitive sensing, we have pushed the performance to new levels with our CAPSENSE™ technology over the last 20 years.

But there are certain physical limits that capacitive sensing cannot overcome such as underwater touch or interaction over direct metallic surfaces.

With Infineon’s PSOC 4 Multi-Sense, we are pushing CAPSENSE performance to new levels but also expand sensing capabilities of this IP with new and proprietary inductive and liquid sensing technologies.

5^th generation CAPSENSE  is less sensitive to noise and more robust than current state of the art approaches that suffer from external noise as well as manufacturability concerns. Infineon’s all-new inductive sensing technology enables new HMI use cases, such as touch-over-metal, force touch surfaces and proximity sensing.

It is highly complementary to capacitive sensing and enables modern, metal-based and waterproof designs with sleek form factors such as metal touch buttons on refrigerators or robust HMI for underwater devices such as cameras and wearables. 

How the company aims to advance with PSOC^TM families, and also share a use case and key advantages qualifying for emerging Edge AI acceleration on a broad range of application fields.

Well, to start with, let’s understand what is driving this need for intelligent connected devices in our homes. We see today that the world is changing. Let me consider one scenario; people worldwide are living longer.

Today most people can expect to live into their eighties and beyond. By 2030, 1 in 6 people in the world will be aged 60 years or above. Now consider elderly people at home, going about their daily lives, but with greater ease in body and mind.

And this is one place where we see further innovation, from passive wellness monitoring and detection to intelligent connected backyard water sprinklers so they don’t need to walk out to manually function them, smart thermostats that will regulate all devices intelligently and all from one place.

And how can we forget security cameras? Imagine with aging parents at home and now you can monitor distress calls, receive pings when movement is detected.

In a way, I would say MCUs are evolving to support the well-being of the users, making lives more convenient. Keeping this as the focus of our technology advancement, PSOC^TM MCUs combine high innovativeness & reliability, real time control, sustainability and edge-readiness with ease of use.

A unique set of software tools and development boards facilitate quick and easy prototyping and application that makes PSOC MCUs suitable for all kinds of applications ranging from standard control of consumer devices, via IoT edge applications with AI/ML functionality to demanding Industrial as well as Automotive use cases.

Infineon is known to be investing to rejig IoT and industrial MCU portfolio. What strategic technological transformations are meant to be seen around this investment?

Yes, we have had a great year, having launched some of our most thrilling MCU product families.

• Last year, we announced a new family of product, PSOC^TM Edge, focused on enabling a new generation of responsive ML-based user centric edge devices by providing hardware accelerated neural net compute support, delivering both “always-on” low power and high-performance operation, in a fully integrated microcontroller with right-sized peripherals, on-chip memories and state-of-the-art security.
• Another major achievement was the launch of our Edge AI software brand DEEPCRAFT^TM – we’ve kicked this off with off-the-shelf AI models, DEEPCRAFT^TM Ready Models, and DEEPCRAFT^TM Studio, a platform for AI model development. With DEEPCRAFT^TM, we will provide adaptable models that customers can quickly adapt to their various Edge AI needs and use cases and environments.
• Earlier this year, we launched PSOC^TM Control which is Infineon’s newest MCU family developed specifically for motor control and power conversion applications. With support of system design tools and software in ModusToolbox^TM, including Motor Suite, this comprehensive solution allows developers to create high-performance, highly efficient and secured motor control and power conversion systems with ease.
• PSOC^TM Control C3 features Entry and Main Line products which offer a scalable and compatible range of performance, features, and memory options. Dedicated MCUs for Motor Control (C3M) and Power Conversion (C3P) address the needs of focus applications, such as home appliances, industrial drives, robots, light electric vehicles (LEVs), solar, and HVAC systems.
• And then more recently, we added to our portfolio the PSOC^TM 4 family with Multi-Sense capabilities, expanding our leading capacitive sensing technology CAPSENSE™ with a new, proprietary inductive sensing technology, as well as a non-invasive and non-contact liquid sensing solution.
• With PSOC^TM 4, developers now have endless possibilities to develop new HMI and sensing solutions. From sleek metallic product designs with touch on metal buttons, to waterproof touch buttons, and innovative ways of sensing liquids, PSOC^TM 4 Multi-Sense unlocks new possibilities of sensing.

The world of IoT devices is evolving at an exponential rate, demanding accurate computation with easyto-use building blocks for high quality IoT designs.

We are continuously investing in new technologies, including edge computing and HMI capabilities, ensuring our MCU portfolio offers cutting-edge solutions to meet the dynamic design demands of the future and support the creation of innovative, intelligent IoT devices.

Strategically, how Infineon MCU portfolio is developing itself for the Indian market, in simple words, where does the company aim to spur its innovation of MCUs, specifically PSOC^TM family in the Indian industrial and consumer market?

The MCU market in India is experiencing significant growth, driven by increasing demand for automation, smart devices, and IoT applications, with the Asia-Pacific region, including India, being a dynamic growth area, and Infineon is ready to support this growth.

With our strong scalable MCU portfolio that offers a broad and scalable portfolio of leading products across Edge AI, HMI, Sensing and Power conversion, with comprehensive software and tools that offer developers an accelerated path to production. 

We are very well positioned to tap into this expanding market. Along with a strong team of sales personnel and application engineers that work closely with our regional customers and partners, we ensure we both understand and deliver to our regional customers the best in MCU performance and energy savings. 

Do you want to highlight the mass market launch of PSOC Edge products which is coming out later in 2025?

Edge AI is a gamechanger for the IoT.  It will help to enhance IoT’s capabilities by enabling data analysis, predictive insights and intelligent decision making at the edge of the IoT. Infineon offers a wide range of state-of-the -art products and solutions, enabling our customers to fully exploit the possibilities of Edge AI, regardless of their expertise.

A year ago, we introduced a new family of best-performing microcontrollers (MCUs) for Edge AI applications, the PSOC Edge E8 series, which will be ready for mass market release in the Summer of 2025.

They have a broad spectrum of capabilities including high performance, low power, state-of-the-art security and comprehensive enablement for a faster time to market.

Additionally, with DEEPCRAFT^TM Ready Models by Imagimob, an Infineon company, we are also now adding the capability to offer an end-to-end ML platform with high flexibility and ease of use, with a strong focus on delivering production-grade ML models.

The Ready Models can be implemented with almost zero Machine Learning knowledge, making Edge AI easy and accessible for literally every manufacturer of IoT devices.