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Multitasking secretary

Where Have All the Secretaries Gone?

By David Benjamin

What’s at stake:
Digital tools are wonderful things. They can do miracles — awesome things that ordinary humans cannot do. And yet, we all need to be reminded that the tool suffers as many limitations as the humans who wield it.

In this and other tech publications, I’ve learned that lidar is a sort of sensor that has advanced the promise of autonomous driving, because it can help read a vehicle’s surroundings and guide its safe passage down the road, past hail and sleet and leaping herds of deer.

The potential of lidars and radars and their bond with artificial intelligence, machine learning and other miracles of the digital revolution is intriguing. But it also stirs my reserves of skepticism. Since seeing my first Vegematic commercial on late-night Channel 8, I’ve been guided by the principle that no labor-saving device has ever lived up to its promos.

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The V-model from ISO 26262, Road vehicles — Functional safety

Is ISO’s New AI Functional Safety Standard Road-Ready? Hardly.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The conventional narrative is that artificial intelligence (AI) can transform safety, as a tool that can be used to detect anomalies and identify workplace hazards. Still unknown, however, is the functional safety of AI hardware and software. A group of engineers who delievered ISO 26262 is taking on the challenge.

AI is already being applied to safety-critical applications, such as autonomous vehicles or highly automated advanced driver assistance systems. So, how can designers of AI-driven E/E systems and developers of AI components validate their new designs as functionally safe – before AI-driven cars hit the road for millions, or billions, of test miles?

Read More »Is ISO’s New AI Functional Safety Standard Road-Ready? Hardly.

Intel Drops Tower Deal as China Withholds Approval

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:
Intel’s goal for itself in the foundry business has suffered a setback with China’s rejection of the Tower Semiconductor acquisition. It is a deep wound that should have been anticipated. Now that the inevitable has happened, the question arises: what was Intel’s fallback plan for gaining the edge it had sought from the Tower offer?

Intel Corp. says its acquisition plans for Tower Semiconductor have been cancelled.

Read More »Intel Drops Tower Deal as China Withholds Approval
Cruise robotaxi crashes into San Francisco Muni Bus

CPUC Votes: Lobbyists 1, Firefighters, Cops & Engineers 0

What’s at stake: 
Technology innovations should be welcomed by all. But every new development requires rigorous engineering based on sufficient data. We now face a future arranged by corporate lobbyists and compliant regulators — captivated by the latest miracle machine — with little regard to safety, to which the machine’s ensabler will pay mere lip service ’til catastrophe strikes.  

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)’s 3-1 vote last night has given official approval to a plan proposed by Waymo and Cruise to expand their commercial robotaxi business 24 hours a day, to all parts of San Francisco — without restriction or regulation.

This win is huge for the autonomous vehicle companies, and those who own them – Alphabet and General Motors.

Read More »CPUC Votes: Lobbyists 1, Firefighters, Cops & Engineers 0

Europe’s RISC-V JV: The Anti-Monopoly Gang

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Automotive chip suppliers and carmakers are betting their future on RISC-V to unshackle themselves from Arm’s roadmap. This might work, it might not. At stake is the future of the IP house, which persists in its delusion that the momentum behind RISC-V does not matter.

To me, it seems clear that the recently announced formation of an equally-shared RISC-V joint venture in Germany – among Bosch, Infineon, NXP, Nordic and Qualcomm – will prove a significant force in the way the electronics industry does business, despite some skepticism in the industry.

Doubters call this a “more of the same” European project, especially in automotive, in which Bosch often takes charge. collaborates with others, to deveop certain technologies.

Others wonder how long it will be before the JV’s RISC-V cores can be designed into commercial products and make a difference on the market. One analyst quipped: “If I am a manager at Arm looking after the partnerships, I won’t be losing my sleep over this.”

Read More »Europe’s RISC-V JV: The Anti-Monopoly Gang
Supply Chain has Become the Electronics Industry’s Defining Topic

ESMC, RISC-V: Supply Chain has Become the Electronics Industry’s Defining Topic

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:
The electronics industry has always been consumed by the search for the “next big thing,” that huge design, product or new market that would create massive revenue and profits for the first group of companies to release it. The supply chain that brings these “breakthroughs” to the market is not typically in the limelight. Until now. Look no further than just announced European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a Dresden-based new foundry led byTSMC, joined by Bosch, Infineon and NXP. Another example is a brand new RISC-V JV, equally shared among NXP, Infineon, Qualcomm, Bosch and Nordic, unveiled late last week. For the foreseeable future, creating effective supply chains via partnerships will be the industry’s greatest passion. Pay attention.

In the world of electronics, the design engineer is a demi-god.

He (usually a man but, thank goodness, increasingly less so nowadays), designs, throws his creation over the wall and everyone else scrambles to bring it to production and sell to customers. The only engineers who get involved in the post-design processes are typically those who moved into management, sales positions and components engineers.

This is a worn process. The industry goes through it daily, thousands of times, and all over the world. Which makes engineers believe they rule the roost.

Read More »ESMC, RISC-V: Supply Chain has Become the Electronics Industry’s Defining Topic
Automakers' Chip Agenda

Automakers’ Chip Agenda: RISC-V, AI, Chiplets

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Except for Tesla, no automaker has contrived to roll out an automotive processor of its own. This vacuum, however, has not curbed car OEMs’ deep-seated desire to design chips for their vehicles. Can chip vendors still provide automakers what they want but aren’t doing for themselves, and at what cost? Or, are automakers’ wonderland agenda sending semiconductor companies down the rabbit hole?

Carmakers’ appetite to develop proprietary processors waned as OEMs got occupied in dealing with chip shortages. Their dream of automated consumer vehicles before 2027 is a memory.

Now, replacing the autonomous vehicles, the momentum among carmakers is an industry-wide push for software-defined vehicles. Automotive OEMs are now beginning to think that if the vehicle’s real value will be in software under the new era, they shouldn’t be in the business of just layering their software on top of hardware selected by tier ones.

Read More »Automakers’ Chip Agenda: RISC-V, AI, Chiplets