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Semiconductors and AI in home appliances: Focus on induction cooktops

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Podcast

Aug 12, 2025

Podcast

In this episode of Podcast4Engineers, host Peter Balint is joined by Walter Bell, Director of Application Marketing for Home Appliances at Infineon, to discuss the latest trends and innovations in induction cooktops. They explore the benefits of induction cooking, including its energy efficiency and flexibility, and how semiconductors are playing a crucial role in improving the technology.

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Speakers

In this episode of Podcast4Engineers, host Peter Balint speaks with Walter Bell, Director of Application Marketing for Home Appliances at Infineon.

Peter Balint

Host:

Peter Balint has shaped visual and audio narratives at Infineon since 2021. He’s a video producer with 20 years of experience and has produced podcasts for the past 10 years. Over his career, Peter has interviewed speakers from all over Europe, bringing high-quality media production and engaging conversations to the forefront of his work.

Walter Bell

Guest:

Walter Bell started his career at Infineon Technologies after graduating in the study of Telematics from the Graz Technical University in 2014. Starting as a Test Engineer allowed him to understand chip development bottom-up. His passion to develop better products focused on customer needs has motivated him to move into Product Marketing in 2019 where he was responsible for a broad range of 3D depth sensing products. In 2024 Walter took the opportunity to drive Infineon, into become an application focused company as Director of the Application Marketing team for Home Appliances.

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Guest: We believe in a green planet, and therefore we need to make sure that we all want home appliances, we all want to turn them on, but everyone, when making a decision to buy a new device, can make a decision to buy one that has lower power consumption.

 

Host: Hello and welcome to Podcast4Engineers. It's the podcast you just have to listen to if you're interested in what's going on in the semiconductor market. I'm your host, Peter Balint, and today I am joined again by Walter Bell. He's the Director of Application Marketing specifically for home appliances here at Infineon. Thank you for coming today and welcome.

 

Guest: A big pleasure from my side to be back. Thank you for inviting me again.

 

Host: So last time we had a very interesting conversation. We talked about things like what role semiconductors play in home appliances, things like AI in home appliances, and computing on the edge versus cloud computing for home appliances. And we really learned quite a bit. And today I was hoping that we could maybe do a deep dive on a specific application and something that's close to you, which is induction cooktops. So, maybe you could give us the rundown on what’s interesting for you about these induction cooktops and what you focus on and what our customers are focusing on?

 

Guest: Yeah. So, induction cooktops are really the most innovative topic. It's the most modern way you can cook your dishes today. It's the most energy-saving and you have direct heat transfer. So, induction cooking is the best in terms of energy efficiency. If you're looking at anything, induction cooking will have the most flexibility. It will boil your water the fastest. It has a very good heat transfer like gasoline cooking. So, induction has a lot of benefits. And when I started to work on the first induction cooktops, or when I had my first induction cooktop, I thought that this all coming from— I first time had a touch interaction, and this touch interaction did not really work as I expected. It was beeping all the time. It was not reacting to my input. And this is something I found quite annoying, but this is also quite some time back. It's 10, 15 years back that this happened. And when I took over induction at Infineon, as a topic, I've seen how far this has progressed. I was really astonished. So, I hope that everybody out there who's listening to us today knows that this is not going to happen with the next cooktops. The CAPSENSE™ Technology has improved significantly. It's now more sensitive. It's faster in responsiveness. The sensitivity helps us to make it water robust. So, when your water is boiling over when you're cooking something, something and you need to wash it away, you will not be traumatized by a lot of alerts that you are getting from your induction cooktop. This is something with more, with better technology, we are able to fix this. And I think this is when I first laid hands on the really modern cooktop, this was a big game changer for me. I knew, okay, this is what I want in my next cooktop. Therefore, we need to make sure it's getting there.

 

Host: So, people who have maybe negative experiences from a few years ago with induction cooking, this might be a thing of the past with the advent of semiconductors and better controls within the induction cooktop.

 

Guest: Exactly. It’s the controls of the induction cooktop, also things like heat transfer. The coils got much better. We have devices that are able to transmit a lot of energy. If you had the experience that, yeah, it's not cooking evenly, that's changing now with multi-zone induction cooktops. So, there is a lot of innovation going on in the induction cooktops. It's simply the most versatile and innovative way you can cook your meals.

 

Host: Okay. And when we think about our appliances getting smarter, or we could call them, I guess, smart appliances, the one thing that comes to mind is this idea of presence detection because this is a way that the user can really interface with the machine. So, tell us a little bit about that and how that works and how effective that is.

 

Guest: So, with more digitalization in your home appliances, that means usually that in the background when you have a display on your home appliances, this needs to be activated. So, basically, it's running, it's a small computer now. And in these small computers, as you experienced at home, they have a little bit of a startup time. And people are sometimes also frustrated, okay, I'm now in front of my appliance and I cannot touch it. I need to wait. And this is something that will also change with technology. I'm thinking here of presence detection. Presence detection allows you to recognize when people are in the room, are close to their devices. You can do that with CAPSENSE, for example, but you can also do this with other ways, with radar technology or also with wireless connectivity. You can detect if somebody is close to the machine, and this helps us to make sure when you want to use your device, it's already up and running. And on the other hand, when you're not in the room, it's turning off. It's not consuming your power. Again, we want to save electricity, and this also will be enabled with presence detection in your home appliances.

 

Host: Okay. But it won't make you cook any better necessarily, will it?

 

Guest: No, it won't make you cook any better. You need AI to do that.

 

Host: I see. Okay. Now let's talk about, in terms of semiconductor solutions in the induction cooktop arena, if you haven't addressed it already, then what is the presence of semiconductors in a— if you could run down the list of what the importance is of these devices?

 

Guest: So, first of all, I pointed out that the power delivery of induction cooktop is great. In order to have great power delivery on your devices, you need great IGBTs, which we are offering. To operate an IGBT, you need gate drivers, you need a control logic, you need a microcontroller which is able to control it to make sure it's always in a safe state and safe operation. And this is something that we can offer. Of course, you will need general power in your device voltages. We have auxiliary power devices that can directly transform the AC voltage that you have from the wall plug to DC voltages that you can use to operate your microcontrollers in your device, your gate drivers. Everything that needs to function will be powered on. And of course, HMI. HMI is a big topic as well as connectivity to make sure that you can connect your devices and they are online and are interacting with your smart home.

 

Host: Okay. And we talked about this concept of your appliances being online in the last episode. And if you didn't see it, then check it out because it's really interesting. But I wonder now, is it just a matter of time before All of our appliances are online, or will there be a time when if you don't want your appliance online, you could choose this, or what direction are we headed in in this area?

 

Guest: So, and I think since, I think in the last 10, 15 years, I've seen that more and more devices got connected. And I think we are following this trend. I think we will get more smart features. The trend to Matter that we mentioned in the last session will be a big game changer for connectivity. If you go to any electronics store and you look for new laundry machines, the need to make them more energy efficient is now leading to all of these devices having connectivity. I think it will go a little bit faster for some appliances. Where you directly can say, okay, I can save power by connecting it to the internet. For other devices where it helps you to get an easier user interface, for example, by controlling it through your phone and always knowing if your induction cooktop is still on while you're already at the airport. This is a feature and functionality that will be easier and cheaper to integrate over time. So that's the great power of semiconductors that with each generation we are making things more advanced in performance, lower in power consumption, and usually also cheaper in price for our customers. And that's the big power of semiconductors that we can deliver into those devices.

 

Host: Okay. And, you know, whenever you talk about putting something online, security, this is always the big question. I'm curious, what are you doing to address these security concerns? And maybe not just you, but the community of developers?

 

Guest: Security is a big aspect. You do not want, basically, if you have a microphone in your devices to be online all the time with your voice, that somebody can enter your private space. And to make really sure that this is not the case from Infineon side, we make sure that anytime there are security vulnerabilities, we fix this with the firmware that we are providing to customers. We make sure that you are receiving regular updates. We make sure there is a new regulation coming from the European Union. It's the Cyber Resilience Act. This will come into effect in December of 2027. And at that point, everyone who's selling home appliances, but not only home appliances, basically connected devices, will have to make sure that over the lifespan of these products, they are staying safe, they are getting updates, and that known vulnerabilities are getting fixed. I think this will have a huge impact for us as users of these devices and having a good feeling that they are secure.

 

Host: Okay. And it sounds like there's a lot of interest in this regulation moving forward.

 

Guest: Yes, absolutely. So basically, as this is already in 2 years from now, usual development cycles are about in this timeframe. So, 2 years for home appliances as a development cycle is quite common. And that means you need to start with it now. It means that by the design of the device that you're making, it's already having this thought of security built in. We do this with our microcontrollers and the firmware that we are delivering. Security is one of the core know-how Infineon has. Not everybody is allowed to produce passports and passport chips for you. We are. And we have this by heart to bring this also to our customers.

 

Host: What does Infineon offer in terms of development? Are there kits or reference boards or what do you have out there?

 

Guest: Yeah. If you, for example, want to start with building your induction cooktop today, I would recommend you just type into Google Infineon induction cooktop. We have for all our home appliances and even more applications landing pages that will show you, okay, these are the most modern products that you can use in your appliances today. You will find all the material there. You will find application presentations that show you Okay, these are the products that we would recommend to use. Others are using this already, and this gives you a head start basically in your development. These are the next-generation products that you can select, and I think this is a way how you can get easily access to evaluation boards, but also more information what you can use in your appliances overall. And where the trends are.

 

Host: So, it pays to sort of stay in touch with Infineon as a provider for this information and for these products. And we will have a link in the show notes to tell you where to go for this. So, we've talked about AI in appliances. We've talked about connectivity. Where do you see the future? This is always an interesting question. I mean, here we are now. What is it like in 5 years? What is it in 10 years?

 

Guest: So, I think a big topic that I see is this cycle I mentioned in the first session. It's a cycle of digitalization and decarbonization. And this is really also by what we believe from Infineon side. We want— we believe in a green planet, and therefore, we need to make sure that we all want home appliances. We all want to turn them on. But everyone, when he makes a decision to buy a new device, make a decision to buy one that has lower power consumption. And we do this with wide bandgap material. I see a huge trend in home appliances going towards wide bandgap. That means gallium nitride and silicon carbide. So, new technologies that you can use in your appliances that will not make your motor spin different, but with lower energy consumption. And I think that's a big advantage here. And the other thing I would like to mention is we have certain technology that we want our audience to see. What really excites me is also what I see coming from the market. So, not every brilliant idea is coming from us, but there are also from the market side customers which are releasing vacuum cleaners which just look like a stick, just like a traditional mop. And this is— I've never seen such a product before. There are customers out there which are making new laundry machines which have 3 drums, so you can wash 3 things at the same time. I've never seen that before. And also in robots, robot vacuum cleaners that are now attached with an arm that can pick up things and bring it to the right location, whatever you have defined in your home. And I think these are a couple of really interesting things that we are seeing from the market where I'm excited that new technology can add to that, make things smaller. And I'm excited to see from our audience what they are coming up with new ideas, with smaller devices, more energy-efficient devices that can last longer with a smaller battery and allow them to build a new form factor.

 

Host: And it sounds like you're always open to the challenge of whatever's on the market to make it better and more efficient. Yeah, good. Well, I think we learned a lot, and this topic I think is very interesting because it appeals to such a wide audience. Thanks for your knowledge today. I really appreciate you coming in.

 

Guest: Thank you, Peter, for having me.

 

Host: And to our audience, I say thanks for tuning in today. We will have information in the show notes, so please have a look, and we hope to see you real soon. Thank you.

 

Guest: Thank you very much.