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A CEO’s Experience During the COVID-19 Crisis — Part III : Looking Ahead

·4 mins·
Covid-19 Espressif Esp32 Ceo Blog ESP-Rainmaker
Table of Contents

The COVID-19 situation is developing rapidly, and the CEO of Espressif, Teo Swee Ann, gives a short update of the situation and some considerations of the future.

The COVID-19 situation continues to unfold fast and globally. It has reached Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the United States, and on the minds of many is whether COVID-19’s advance will be arrested by warmer weather or if a cure or vaccine will be found.

Update
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In Espressif, the COVID-19 situation has imposed upon us many changes, such as how we conduct meetings and interact. But we have otherwise been operating normally for close to three weeks, since the Chinese New Year break.

Here are some of the statistics: 97% of our staff in China are now back to work, of which about 23% are working from home. 2.5% are at home under quarantine, most of whom will return this coming week.

Making Chips
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Two weeks ago, we had a test chip back from fabrication, and our engineers have, since then, been busy with the measurements.This chip is one of those “high risk test chips” where we put in our latest ideas and see what works and what doesn’t. As usual, the initial results are a mixed bag: some things work and that’s great; some things don’t work and that’s even better — it tells us that there is perhaps a lesson to be learnt here.

In the last couple of days, the measurement results of the chip have given us more hope as we gradually figure out how we need to adjust our settings in order to coax the best performance from it. The result is a net improvement in performance and lowered power consumption under limited conditions.

Moving Forward One Step At A Time
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Limited conditions? Yes, it’s about first getting to the higher ground so that we could build upon it and generalize and build a platform. I am glad that I still feel the joy of achieving the gain in performance in the chip, because I have had been distracted by the COVID-19 issues. I still have a daily update from my staff about the figures from various countries, the latest news about the virus and spend time reading the statistics.

While it is possible that the virus will be with us for a relatively long period of time on the order of a couple of year or more, the best outcome would be a winding down of infections starting from April, as the weather gets warmer. But in the short term, given that it’s another 30 days to get to warmer weathers, COVID-19 is highly infectious and many parts of the world are not taking drastic measures, if COVID-19 spreads to 5% of the world’s population outside of China with a mortality rate of 1%, then we are talking about ~2.5 million deaths over the next 1–2 months.

Staying on Course
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Despite this, we do not see the direct impact of the virus extending beyond 2020, because there is a very high probability of a vaccine or effective medication to be found within this time frame. With researchers all around the world working round the clock to solve the COVID-19 crisis, and the recent advances in microbiology and science, it is probable that new effective solutions will be implemented by the end of the year.

For the rest of us, we need to focus on some of the bigger issues on the horizon, and in particular, the global environmental crisis.

IOT
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IOT can be an important technology to combat against the global environmental crisis: global warming, rising sea levels, species extinction, resource depletion, plastics, etc. Espressif continues to contribute to useful knowledge of the world, through our open source projects related to IOT and artificial intelligence. In the process of this, we hope to build collaborations and consensus.

Espressif remains on our course to better serve our customers and Makers through the democratization of technology, to use open source IOT technology to build cost effective, smart, secure, connected devices, and in the process of it, solve some real world problems.

This is my last update on COVID-19. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Teo Swee Ann, CEO Espressif Systems

7 March 2020

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