Sonatus Discusses Software Foundation for SDVs
We ask Sonatus CEO: “What’s the ‘proper’ software foundation for SDVs?”
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First, Software-Defined Sensors, Then SDVs
What’s at stake:
The concept of software-defined vehicles for whole-vehicle architecture is the automotive industry’s hot topic. But SDVs, for most OEMs, are still in early development. Nonetheless, “software-defined sensors” appear to have traction among carmakers. Why?
Software-defined sensors are going commercial way ahead of software-defined vehicles. This is because OEMs are now required to develop cars compliant with federally mandated Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) rules, including Pedestrian AEB in low light.
Carmakers must pass tests of minimum performance criteria and meet a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) timeline.
OEMs are seeking an answer in “software-defined” sensors, largely because it might enable them to pass AEB tests without adding new sensor hardware such as thermal cameras or lidars.
Read More »First, Software-Defined Sensors, Then SDVs
Microchip On-Board Charger Solution for EVs
The adoption of electric vehicles worldwide necessitates effective charging solutions. This white paper examines the fusion of Microchip’s dsPIC33 Digital Signal Controllers (DSC) with Silicon Carbide (SiC) technology, which offers a comprehensive system solution and systemic design approach to develop an on-board charger (OBC).
Nvidia Overshadows The Chip Industry’s Growth Malaise
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake?
Notwithstanding the excitement about AI, the chip market is in a state of disquiet. Nvidia Corp.’s soaring revenue and valuation conceals the unpleasant reality that growth is either negative or unremarkable for most chipmakers. This raises questions about the strength of the recovery expected for 2024 and 2025.
Nvidia Corp. and its shareholders can be forgiven for seeing only green and lush semiconductor turfs while many of its peers drift through a parched field.
In today’s semiconductor industry, thriving and struggling enterprises exist side by side, their varied experiences masked by the laws of averages. On the AI chips side, demand has overwhelmed supply while the other side is swimming in a glut of inventory.
Seen as a whole, though, the chip market is readying for another year of record sales. But is this another mirage, a regular feature of an industry notorious for its unreliable prognostications?
Read More »Nvidia Overshadows The Chip Industry’s Growth Malaise
OEMs’ SDV Dilemma
NXP believes software-defined vehicles can help OEMs shorten the vehicle design cycle and go beyond upgrades.
Microsoft’s and Apple’s AI-Mighty Algorithm
We still don’t know a whole lot about what AI PC exactly does. Nor do we understand what consumers should expect.
One thing is clear. Afflicted with AI fever, the tech industry that contributed to creating AI PCs and Copilot+ PCs is overtly jubilant.
Fueled by AI’s explosive growth and pressured by Wall Street, business and tech-world CEOs are eagerly styling themselves as passionate users and advocates for AI.
Intel Corp. CEO Pat Gelsinger compares AI PC’s impact to Wi-Fi’s emergence on Intel’s Centrino platform. Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., told reporters last week that she’s “an avid user of GPT, Copilot too.” She added that AMD wants “to put AI through the development pipeline, as well as marketing, sales, HR, all of those. It is going to be AI everywhere.”
Given this enthusiasm among smart executives, seriously, what could go wrong?
Read More »Microsoft’s and Apple’s AI-Mighty Algorithm
AI Forces ‘Interconnects’ Outside the Box
What’s at stake:
Ai is disrupting the electronics industry. Increasingly diversified AI workloads are triggering seismic changes in the architecture of chips, boxes and data centers. Synopsys explains how AI is shortening PCIe spec cycles and discusses the role of next-generation interconnects in AI-driven data centers.
The tech industry understands AI’s voracious appetite for more data, computing power and memory, and is coping — sort of. But so far not discussed enough are “interconnects” inside a box that have to migrate outside the box.
“In the world of interconnects, we are beginning to hit the laws of semiconductor physics,” said Manmeet Walia, executive director, mixed-signal PHY IP, Synopsys, in a recent interview with the Ojo-Yoshida Report. In contrast, “with compute, you can still go faster by leaning on Moore’s Law. Or, if you can’t go any faster, you can start parallelizing processing.”
Interconnect speed is now clearly trailing compute, according to Walia. Worse, doubling the bandwidth of an interconnect – from 64 gigabits to 128 gigabits per second, for example – does not just double complexity. It introduces “an exponential increase in complexity,” he noted.
Read More »AI Forces ‘Interconnects’ Outside the Box
Microsoft’s CoPilot+ Puts Intel on a Knife-Edge
By Peter Clarke
What’s at stake:
There was a time when Computex in Taiwan, the land of the PC motherboard manufacturers, was a slightly tired annual event. But not in 2024, the year of the advent of the AI-enabled personal computer – or as Microsoft would brand it, the CoPilot+ PC. This year there are many parts in motion and that means there are likely to be big changes in the winners and losers in the supporting semiconductor cast of characters.
In the mid-1990s when Robin Saxby, then CEO of processor IP licensor ARM, told me that his company’s technology was in 70 percent of all mobile phones I realized that startup company ARM had become a global player. The current CEO, Rene Haas, is claiming that ARM could claim more than 50 percent of the Windows PC market by 2029. If that happens it will likely mean that Intel’s time as a global player is over. That is unless Intel itself becomes a maker of PC processors based on the ARM architecture.
It could happen.
Read More »Microsoft’s CoPilot+ Puts Intel on a Knife-Edge
Phil Koopman: Two Sides of the SDV Coin
Phil Koopman, professor at Carnegie Mellon Univ., weighs in on the SDV by asking his signature question: #didyouthinkofthat?
ST & Wolfspeed: A Tale of Two SiC Suppliers
What’s at stake:
The contrast between ST and Wolfspeed couldn’t be starker. Did Wolfspeed, focused intently on leading the transition from 6- to 8-inch SiC wafers, underestimate Chinese wafer makers? Or, too busy satisfying multi-year wafer contracts with SiC device vendors such as Infineon and Renesas, did Wolfspeed fail to see that profitability in the business has already moved on from wafers to devices? We pick the Yole Group’s brain to learn what ST has done comparatively better.
STMicroelectronics last week unveiled its plan for a new 8-inch SiC manufacturing facility in Catania, Italy. That site will become an integrated hub for ST’s comprehensive SiC operations, from wafers to testing and packaging devices.
This move is monumental.
Above all, it paves ST’s path to become, over the long run, a genuine leader on the SiC market.
Read More »ST & Wolfspeed: A Tale of Two SiC Suppliers