This CES is (Almost) All About AI
CES opened with a bang as the queue to hear Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stretched 200 meters long. Our Day 2 podcast concludes, AI is already the star this year at CES.
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What’s Cooking at OYR (and at my house)
Mike Markowitz assumes the role of editor-in-chief at the Ojo-Yoshida Report with a mouthwatering introduction.
NXP Heats Up Auto Play with TTTech Auto Buy
BREAKING NEWS
By Bolaji Ojo
NXP Semiconductor N.V. said it has struck a deal to purchase TTTech Auto, agreeing to pay $625 million for the Vienna-based company in a bid to strengthen its offerings in the areas of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV).
The transaction, which NXP announced today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), is a game-changer for the company, giving it accelerated inroad into partnerships with automakers developing SDV solutions. TTTech has deep relationships with automakers already, and it is expected that NXP will piggyback on these to further its own engagement with the transportation OEMs.
Read More »NXP Heats Up Auto Play with TTTech Auto Buy
Prefix AI, Nvidia and TSMC will dominate a slow 2025
By Peter Clarke
What’s at stake:
A new year and hope spring’s eternal. It should if you are working on AI-related technology. The rapid rise of different forms of AI – edge, hybrid, agentic and embodied or physical AI – means that Nvidia’s incumbency as semiconductor market leader is set to continue. For many others, the future is not looking so bright.
It would be all-too human to argue that the trend towards artificial intelligence that has been so strong over the last several years must be about to abate and allow some different innovation to be the forcing function for the technology sector in 2025.
The argument that exponential growth must end eventually is compelling. And it surely applies to the technology and to the semiconductor leader Nvidia.
And yet, while the annual doubling of revenue that Nvidia has shown will be hard to sustain, this human being thinks that AI will continue to be the driver of the semiconductor economy. Indeed, there is likely to be a renewed surge of interest in AI with the addition of prefixes such as edge, hybrid, agentic and embodied or physical.
Read More »Prefix AI, Nvidia and TSMC will dominate a slow 2025
Mitsubishi Deal Boosts Seeing Machines in SDV Market
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake:
First, Seeing Machines scored a big lifeline, improving its balance sheet and its competitiveness. More importantly, the company’s profile received a huge boost, making it an even more notable player in the software-defined vehicles (SDV) market and in applications for driver and vehicle occupant monitoring.
Seeing Machines wrapped up 2024 in grand style, scoring a much-needed investment from Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Mobility that executives believe will help the company further penetrate the automotive industry while boosting its balance sheet.
Japan’s Mitsubishi framed the transaction, in which it has purchased approximately 19.9 percent of Seeing Machines, as part of its efforts to comply with growing regulatory requirements in Europe and elsewhere to improve driver and passenger safety in automotives.
Read More »Mitsubishi Deal Boosts Seeing Machines in SDV Market
The Heat is on for Multi-die Design
By Ron Wilson
What’s at stake:
Integrated circuits operating at high speed generate a lot of heat, enough to destroy themselves and their surroundings. With the advent of dense advanced-packaging modules for AI, the old solutions are no longer sufficient, and the race is on to find alternatives. The demands are intense, however, and all players, including EDA vendors and physical analysis solutions vendors will have to team up with design engineers to develop a common thermal model with packaging companies.
Recently discussions have flared up about thermal issues in advanced packaging. But since the beginning of the semiconductor industry heat has lurked just below the surface, threatening to bubble up and make a mess of project schedules and system performance.
Today, as the inexhaustible demands of AI drive a convergence of Angstrom-era dies, advanced 3D packaging, and liquid cooling, the pot is boiling over.
Read More »The Heat is on for Multi-die Design
Google and Synaptics Jointly Kick off 2025 Edge AI Race
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake:
Artificial intelligence is expanding fast from the large language models to “Edge AI,” where more chipmakers and equipment manufacturers expect to make a major impact by tying it up with Internet of Things (IoT). Companies are racing to offer AI at the Edge, but they are also collaborating with partners across the design chain. With their announced collaboration so early in the new year, Synaptics and Google are staking out a position they want the rest of the rest of the market to adopt.
Synaptics Inc. and Google Inc. have announced a collaboration to enhance Edge AI for the Internet of Things (IoT). This partnership aims to optimize multimodal processing for context-aware computing by integrating Google’s MLIR-compliant machine learning (ML) core with Synaptics Astra hardware, along with open-source software and tools.
The companies said their collaboration will accelerate the development of AI devices for IoT, supporting various modalities such as vision, image, voice, and sound for seamless interactivity in applications like wearables, appliances, entertainment, and more.
Read More »Google and Synaptics Jointly Kick off 2025 Edge AI Race
Intel Needs an Active, Competent Board, not a ‘Savior’ CEO
By Bolaji Ojo
Michele Johnston Holthaus can still get confirmed as Intel Corp.’s next CEO, vaulting to the top of the management team from her current title of interim co-CEO. But Holthaus would not be the perfect candidate – one presumably with a degree and background in engineering like the last CEO Patrick Gelsinger. She wouldn’t be at a loss in the position, either. Holthaus has the potentials to become a great leader at Intel.
Still, the substantive CEO question isn’t the priority for Intel now. What the public and the chipmaker’s various audiences want to have answers to are more pressing questions about its future. Questions such as: will Intel spin off its foundry unit or retain it as an inhouse operation; will it go ahead and spend billions of dollars on the new fabs promised by Gelsinger or will it seek to conserve funds; what’s the vision for Intel and; what’s the latest on its turnaround plan?
Read More »Intel Needs an Active, Competent Board, not a ‘Savior’ CEO
AI Past, Present, and Future (Part 3)
By Clive (Max) Maxfield
What’s at stake:
AI is revolutionizing everything from creative endeavors to caregiving, relationships, labor markets, and even warfare. As we look toward an AI-driven future, the stakes lie in balancing its immense potential to enhance our lives with the ethical, societal, and existential risks it poses.
The 1984 American science fiction action film, The Terminator, featured Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic assassin from the future. The underlying plot is that an artificially intelligent system called Skynet becomes self-aware, determines that humans are a threat to its existence, and decides to eradicate humanity from the face of the Earth. Hold that thought…
In Part 1 of this mini-series on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), we predominantly pondered the days of AI in the past. In Part 2, we turned our attention to AI in the present. Now it’s time to cogitate and ruminate on the potential (both good and ill) for AI in the future.
Read More »AI Past, Present, and Future (Part 3)
The ‘Wild West’ of Cybercabs in Five Easy Steps
Phil Koopman’s playbook identifies a plausible path for carmakers and tech companies to follow. Given a strong incentive, “it only takes one company to do this at scale, which will trigger a race to the bottom,” he says.