About Todd Lepinski
Todd Lepinski, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Synaptics, appeared at Embedded World in September 2024 to discuss the company's newly launched Astra platform. He described the platform as consisting of three elements: new silicon (the SL series with three processors at different price and performance points), a hardware development kit, and an open source software platform that includes Linux and an AI framework. Lepinski stated that the open source aspect allows customers to avoid being locked into a proprietary ecosystem or "black box," enabling them to differentiate and innovate on their own.
Lepinski reported that the reaction to the launch had been "phenomenal," noting that Synaptics won a best of show award and saw significant uptake in the first hours of the event. He added that before the launch, the company had been selling similar products in vertical markets such as set-top boxes and voice over IP, and that customers had been requesting those products for embedded applications, which he said was accelerating interest in the new platform.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Todd Lepinski's recent appearances.
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Transcript (7 segments)
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Rich Nass0:04
Good afternoon. I am in the Synaptics booth here at Embedded World. I'm Rich Nass, Executive Vice President of Open Systems Media. We're in Booth Hall 4A 259, and I'm with Todd Lepinski, Senior Vice President with Synaptics. Hello Todd. Thank you for joining our booth here. This is pretty cool because I know you guys just launched this Astro platform.
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Todd Lepinski0:26
Yes, very excited. What does the platform consist of? So the platform is really three things. We launched new silicon, the SL platform, SL standing for Synaptics Linux. Three processors in different price performance points, a board platform, the Mikina hardware platform or development kit, and the software platform which consists of open source Linux, truly open. Customers download a Yocto Linux delivery and an open source AI framework.
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Rich Nass1:02
And what's been the reaction since you've launched?
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Todd Lepinski1:04
Phenomenal. We're excited, of course. We won a Best of Show award last night. That was exciting. And it's been phenomenal uptake. I mean, just in the first few hours of the show, but we kind of expected that because it's amazing how even before we launched this, we've been selling similar products in vertical platform set-top box voice over IP, and we've had customers asking us to use these in embedded applications. So we've already had interest, and now it's just accelerating.
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Rich Nass1:38
So what is the open source aspect mean to it? We hear a lot from customers that they've got a lot of platforms where they're stuck to an ecosystem or some of the parts of the system are a black box, and truly being open so customers again they can differentiate, they can do things on their own in the community, and they don't need to go inside these black boxes.
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Todd Lepinski2:02
Very good. Somebody wants to hear more, come on to the booth, ask for Todd. We're in Hall 4A, Booth 259. Thank you.
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Rich Nass2:14
Thanks, Rich.
