Nobody forges their own screwdriver: Inside the chip-down versus module debate — We Talk IoT #88

Harvesters, buses and mining machines are becoming rolling computers. The hardware inside them has to last decades. Yet the AI running on top of it changes every quarter.

Ralf Kapahnke from Tria Technologies and Frank Neelen from Avnet Silica discuss where the CAV CAV (Commercial and Agricultural Vehicles) market is heading. Cameras that spot-treat pesticide or milking robots that turn farmers into a roboticists, are just two use cases we cover. And the decision facing every OEM: solder the processor onto your own board, or fit a module.

#CAV #embedded #functionalsafety #agritech #edgeai #iot #wetalkiot

Summary of this week’s episode:

01:30 What CAV means

03:20 Why AI and connectivity change the requirements

04:10 Functional safety: when a tractor meets a human being

06:30 Talking to your machine: LLMs moving from cloud to chip

07:15 AI-driven autonomy, from drone irrigation to predictive maintenance

09:00 Spot-treating pesticide with camera-based systems

10:45 Autonomous milking robots

13:30 Beyond agriculture: street cleaning, buses and people counting

15:20 Mining: robots underground

16:30 What keeps developers awake — and why software now leads hardware

19:00 What chip-down actually means

20:30 The module case: less risk, faster time to market

23:00 Where scalability pays off for an OEM

24:00 Volume, ARM versus x86, and the OSM trend

26:30 Modularity as a business strategy

Show notes:

Ralf Kapahnke: linkedin.com/in/ralf-kapahnke-a713b912b

Frank Neelen: linkedin.com/in/frank-neelen-93008376

Tria Technologies — commercial and agricultural vehicles: tria-technologies.com/commercial-agricultural-…

The episode with AGCO Fendt is called “From the cab to the cloud: How AGCO Fendt is making smart farming real”: my.avnet.com/silica/resources/podcast/episode-…

Listen to the “We Talk IoT” Soundtrack on:

Spotify: open.spotify.com/playlist/05MOV4OV2MH2in2txsAG…

YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=D-NvQ6VJYtE&list=PLLqg…

About Avnet Silica:

This podcast is brought to you by Avnet Silica — the Engineers of Evolution.

Subscribe to our newsletters here: my.avnet.com/silica/resources/newsletter

You can connect with us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/silica-an-avnet-company. Or find us at avnet-silica.com.