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Bought caught in a rough water

Chip Leaders Are Responsible for Capex Disarray

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:
The capital expenditure plans announced by chipmakers just a couple of years back were huge – in dollar value, number of plants and scale – but they were also unrealistic. Why are semiconductor industry executives that should know better this prone to shooting themselves in the foot?

Once again, the latest semiconductor industry capital expenditure fever has broken. Forecasts for double-digit year-over-year capex increases are being revised downwards, steering the industry towards more believable numbers.

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IoT vulnerability

IoT: Welcome Mat to Insecurity

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
For a long time, spending on security was never a priority for most IoT/embedded system vendors. Their rationale: Why spend money to prepare their devices for events that rarely happen? However, as an onslaught of cybersecurity regulation looms on the horizon, complacency is a risky option.

“Cybersecurity does not help sell IoT products,” Colin Duggan, CEO & cofounder of BG Networks, recently told us. He added that getting companies to make the commitment to IoT cybersecurity “is more difficult than it sounds.”

This has been true despite serious cases of damage done by insecure connected systems.

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Who’s in the zoo: a brief taxonomy of AI systems

Who’s in the Zoo: A Brief Taxonomy of AI Systems

By Ron Wilson

What’s at stake:
With all the claims and commentary about AI systems, you can’t tell the insightful from the frightful without a program. That means digging into the different things hiding under the AI umbrella.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. From medical research labs to your car, from police stations to your vacuum cleaner, there is no escaping it. This ubiquity begs for a good definition. But there is no simple definition — a myriad of different technologies huddle under the AI umbrella.

Unfortunately, the term itself can add perceived value to a product. So AI gets stretched beyond its natural bounds, to fit any situation where it might improve profit margins. But to understand what is really happening with AI today we need a more precise definition.

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Industrial IoT

Sony Buys Its Way into IoT/Industrial Market via Raspberry Pi

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
In contrast to most MCU suppliers in the world, Sony has not built its own IoT developers’ community. Sony’s angle is, however, its technology prowess in image sensors. Will the Raspberry Pi community fill the gap for Sony? 

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp. this week revealed it invested an undisclosed sum in Raspberry Pi Ltd., the trading arm of Raspberry Pi Foundation.

This marks the first investment in Raspberry Pi by a semiconductor company, confirmed Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi’s CEO.

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GM Super Cruise Instrument Cluster

Does Your Car Know Jack? Or Jill? Or Anyone?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Cars with features such as highway hands-free operation are designed to work, in principle, “collaboratively” with a human driver. The big caveat is that most carmakers know next to nothing about our real-world driving behavior. At issue is how human drivers and partially automated vehicles can collaborate when neither side knows jack about the other. 

Consider the moment when a car disengages its automated features and asks the carbon-based life form behind the wheel to take over. Suddenly, the driver must take charge, regardless of whether he/she is – cognitively or physically – ready.

This is carmakers’ decidedly one-sided expectation, for which human drivers are ill-prepared.

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a small company is ro be merged with a bigger company

Analysts: Onsemi Is Natural Candidate to Buy Wolfspeed

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Silicon-based power electronics devices and silicon carbide (SiC) power devices have commonalities. Suppliers of both types tend to be more vertically integrated. Where they diverge is their yields. SiC yield – from wafers to devices – is dramatically lower than silicon-based power devices. With everyone racing to nail down base manufacturing technology, the stakes center on how long Wolfspeed can keep competitors at bay.

To be clear, Wolfspeed is not for sale.

However, considering all factors affecting today’s silicon carbide (SiC) business, the industry experts tend toward the conclusion that On Semiconductor Corp. (Onsemi) is the most logical suitor to buy Wolfspeed. Here’s why.

Read More »Analysts: Onsemi Is Natural Candidate to Buy Wolfspeed
Last Kid Picked Book Cover

The Artificial Me

By David Benjamin

“Generating a bio is a great way to show people some of the limitations of this system. Asking it to generate a bio for the same person three times in a row is an eye-opener for some. For me it was wrong universities, wrong field of study, and made up some awards that don’t exist. But it did upgrade me to IEEE Fellow (nice!)”

— Prof. Philip Koopman, Carnegie-Mellon University

Phil Koopman devised a foolproof method (see above) for testing the data-farming accuracy of the latest “artificial intelligence” application, ChatGPT—which is supposed to be so good at writing that journalists, p.r. flacks, and even “creative types” like me will soon be tucked away in a bed of mothballs. 

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Infineon is building the 300mm Smart Power Fab in Dresden

Infineon Flourishes on ‘Good Times’ for Power Semiconductors

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
Seeing robust growth prospects in power semiconductors, Infineon is tightening its viselike hold on the market with acquisitions and investments in new fabs. And it is not keeping quiet about its intentions either.

Infineon Technologies AG has two key messages for its direct competitors and the entire semiconductor industry.

The first missive is simple. A downturn-inducing storm may be brewing in the semiconductor sector but it will not make landfall at Infineon. The company will grow at a double-digit this fiscal year, it said in a March 28 performance update.

Read More »Infineon Flourishes on ‘Good Times’ for Power Semiconductors