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Ultra Cruise will become available when GM launches the Cadillac CELESTIQ.

The Ultra Question for Ultra Cruise

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
General Motors is throwing all the sensor technologies they can scrounge at its upcoming Ultra Cruise – the company’s next-generation hands-free driving system. Will that make Ultra Cruise a better “automated vehicle” than a Tesla?

The sensor suite that comes with General Motor’s new Ultra Cruise seems quite impressive. But what jumped out to me in GM’s announcement wasn’t the gadgetry. The grabber was the new claim that GM customers will “over time” be able to “travel truly hands-free with Ultra Cruise across nearly every paved public road in the U.S. and Canada, including city streets, subdivisions and rural roads, in addition to highways.”

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Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO

Nvidia: Not ‘Just a Chip Company’ Anymore

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
Ahead of its GTC AI and metaverse conference for developers next week, we review the budding results of Nvidia’s decade-long investment in artificial intelligence and its steady buildup of a strong hardware and software position in the segment. Nvidia is aiming for the AI Moon, and it may just be within its reach.

Artificial Intelligence, warts and all, appears destined to play a significant role not just in the semiconductor industry but also in the larger global economy over the next decade and Nvidia Corp. is setting itself up as a pioneer and major beneficiary of the new expected opportunities.   

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IoT Chip Suppliers Race for a Better Mousetrap

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
In an era of increasingly diversified embedded and IoT system designs, competition among semiconductor companies is no longer about whose chip has the best performing spec. The industry’s attention is quickly shifting toward development platforms. At stake for chip vendors is whether they have chops to design effective tools that offer flexibility, ease of use, and the accelerated design cycle that customers want.

The business model in semiconductors is in flux. Chip companies can no longer rest easy with a conventional one-time approach to revenue generation.

Nowadays, many companies hope to develop a better mousetrap that can turn one-time customers into a “captive audience” generating “a recurring revenue stream.”

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Cellular IoT: Can a Startup Revive a Stagnant Market?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The growth of the cellular IoT market did not stall for lack of trying. But repeated failures to launch have left system designers and users in the lurch, leaving the segment ignored, even discredited. At stake are billions of “things” left unconnected, unable to self-report their status. That makes it impossible to monitor the devices, intervene or fix them, when needed. Who will step up to the plate?

Starting from the top, what exactly is cellular IoT? Who wants it? If there is demand for it, then why does cellular connectivity rarely make the headlines? What issues, if any, prevent the scaling—and commercial viability—of cellular IoT?

Meet Blues Wireless.

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NASA chooses Microchip

Microchip: Riding RISC-V All the Way to New FPGA Platform

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
RISC-V’s open-standard instruction set architecture has already proven an effective underlying technology for designers seeking differentiated microcontrollers/microprocessors. Will RISC-V find a new home in FPGAs? Microchip believes it has the answer.

Microchip is enjoying a market resurgence for its FPGA products.

Originally developed by Actel Corp., later acquired by Microsemi (October 2010), and now owned by Microchip (May 2018), the peripatetic FPGA is known for its immunity to single event upsets and for military-grade reliability. Those attributes have opened opportunities for Microchip’s FPGAs in avionics, military, and medical electronics markets.

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Love has no algorithm

Love Has No Algorithm

By David Benjamin

“You’d be surprised how much time I spend explaining to my colleagues that the chief dangers of AI will not come from evil robots with red lasers coming out of their eyes.”
—Congressman (with a Master’s degree in AI) Jay Obernoite

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, the question that haunted the conventioneers, from engineers and marketing flacks to a seedy and asocial army of “influencers,” was “How do I talk to my washing machine?”

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Hidetoshi Shibata, Renesas CEO

The Man Who Put Renesas Back on The Global IC Map

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The founders of Renesas Electronics in 2010 had high hopes to make their company Japan’s flagship semiconductor supplier. Instead, Renesas lost its way. The life-or-death question for almost a decade has been, who could save Renesas and how he could pull it off. Has Renesas found its guy?

It has taken a generational change, an intrepid global view and exceptional financial savvy to breathe a new life into Renesas, Japan’s ailing chip company. In the most recent financial call, Hidetoshi Shibata, Renesas CEO, declared, “I believe Renesas is finally joining the ranks with global peers in the semiconductor industry.”

Read More »The Man Who Put Renesas Back on The Global IC Map