Top Stories of the Week: Apr. 6-10, 2026

Check out the latest stories, videos, and podcasts from the week of Apr. 6, 2026.

William G. Wong

Roger Engelke Jr.

Related To:

Electronic Design

April 7, 2026

3 min read

In This Issue

Editorial: Agentic AI
Featured Content
New Products
Multimedia on ElectronicDesign
Editor's Choice: From the ElectronicDesign Archives
Editor's Weekly Picks
More Top Stories of the Week

Welcome to Electronic Design's weekly publication, where you can find the latest articles, videos, and podcasts. Keep checking back as more content is added every day during the week. You can sign up for our daily newsletter to see the latest articles as they're posted. Check out the latest newsletters. You can also check out archived versions of Top Stories of the Week.

William Wong Senior Content Director — **William Wong**
Senior Content Director

Editorial: Agentic AI

Hopefully you didn't miss last week's April 1st online issue. The PDF eBook is now available and you can vote for your favorite article. There are some comments if you can find them (our comment system needs work).

This week I have an article on agentic AI that covers some of the basics. The rush to put AI everywhere, especially in the growing number of massive data centers, has prompted the likes of Arm in driving the chip market.

There's a lot more this week and I will be updating this short overview soon.

Featured Content

How to Control Brushless Motors (Part 1)

Understanding the basics is critical to squeezing higher efficiency, smoother motion, and better torque out of three-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motors.

Apply Tee Networks to Broaden TIA Required Solutions—Part 1: Compensation Flow

This article delves into developing a simple four-step compensation flow that delivers an approximate closed-loop Butterworth response for the TIA design, which is then modified...

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Classic Temperature Sensor Stabilizes Photonic Laser Cavity

A classic RTD temperature sensor fabricated on a photonic device provides essential wavelength stabilization.

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Multimaterial 3D Printer Creates Entire Electric Motor “On the Spot”

This 3D printer defies expectations, as it prints all conductive and non-conductive parts of an entire motor.

In Search of Electric Aviation: ED Heads to Sun ‘N Fun and Flite Fest 2026

Electric aviation is on the rise and Electronic Design’s Lee Goldberg will be on the road to cover the latest developments at two of this year’s most exciting air shows.

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What’s the Difference Between Agentic AI, MCPs, and LLMs?

Find out about how the parts of agentic AI work together.

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New Products

Check out our new product coverage.

Basic Logic Functions are Still Needed – Even in Cars

The humble, ancient digital logic gate continues to play a key role in advanced applications.

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650-V Bidirectional GaN Could Rewrite the Power-Conversion Playbook

Renesas’ reference design for a 500-W single-stage solar microinverter draws on the power of its latest 650-V bidirectional GaN switch devices.

Embedded World 2026: Boards and Modules (Part 2)

From long-range Wi-Fi HaLow gateways to AI-ready modules, these five SBC platforms target embedded, industrial, and edge applications.

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Multimedia on ElectronicDesign

Here are our latest videos and podcasts.

Latest Featured Media on Electronic Design

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The Weekend Binge Newsletter delivers the latest multimedia to your email

Editor's Choice: From the ElectronicDesign Archives

These articles were chosen by the editors at ElectronicDesign that complement the new articles above. They are included in our regular newsletters.

Remembering RS-232

RS-232 was a ubiquitous serial interface that still has its uses.

Electronic Design Archive 1991

Members can sign in and download the print issues of Electronic Design from the year 1991

TDECQ: Understanding the Theory Behind the Key Metric for PAM4 Optical Transmitters

When decisions were made to change from historical NRZ or simple on-off modulation to PAM4 in the development of advanced comms systems, methods to quantify transmitter performance...

Methane-Based Laser Source Creates 120 Distinct THz Frequencies

By using energy transitions of methyl fluoride molecules in a quantum laser, researchers have devised a system that creates over 120 tunable frequencies across the terahertz band...

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Editor's Weekly Picks

We hope you enjoy the articles on ElectronicDesign, but there's a lot going on and we can't cover everything. In this section, our editors highlight articles they found this week that you might be interested in as well.

Bill Wong's Pick of the Week

Optics will be important for high-speed AI, especially for communications, but it can be used for computation as well.

Photons power AI chip, calculations at speed of light
Artificial intelligence (AI) chip using photons in place of electrons acts as a photonic neural network accelerator—computation is performed directly through optical propagation. @ Laser Focus World

Our Special Report: 2026 Technology Forecast arrived last week. You might also like this from our sister publication:

7 IoT Trends Shaping Smart Homes and Buildings in 2026
The Internet of Things has made our lives more connected and automated than ever before, with accelerated adoption across homes, buildings, and industrial environments. @ Microwaves & RF

And if you're wondering how your parts are arriving, then check this out:

Hormuz Disruption Triggers New Transshipment Across Asia
Navi Mumbai has become a major transshipment hub, with volumes increasing more than 700%, says project44. @ Material Handling & Logistics

Andy's Picks From Around the Web

Tech layoffs are at their worst since 2023, and AI is a big reason. Link

World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Farm Connects First Subsea Export Cable To Power 3.3 Million Homes. Link

(4/5/26) Iran threatens ‘complete and utter annihilation’ of OpenAI's $30B Stargate AI data center in Abu Dhabi — regime posts video with satellite imagery of ChatGPT-maker's premier 1GW data center. With the dependencies created by the US on AI for warfighting, these seem to be the modern-day ball-bearing factories to take out. Link

Linux 7.1 is finally ending support for Intel's 37-year-old 486 processor. Link

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About the Author

William G. Wong

Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.