Asking the Right Questions & ‘Reading’ People
In “Backbone,” author David Schneer takes an unconventional path to make the case for the value of qualitative research.
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China Isn’t for Everyone, Maybe Not Even Nvidia
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake:
Nvidia stands at a crossroads. Its business is growing fast but it must satisfy hard taskmasters (China and US) with conflicting objectives. It must pick one of them, abandon the second and accept that fate has given it the opportunity to make that choice. Nvidia’s exponential growth means it can afford to exercise this option in a tech world being driven bonkers by nationalism and geopolitics. All signs point to a worsening of the unsustainable situation. Companies will eventually be forced to pick a side. Nvidia must lead the way. Will it be that bold?
Nvidia Corp. needs an urgent China exit strategy. The alternative is to abide by strangulating and conflicting requirements being imposed upon the global electronics industry by rivals America and China.
The American semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) systems builder may be one of the world’s most valuable companies, but in the hands of both the US and China it is a mere pawn in an increasingly fractious geopolitical game.
It’s time to exercise a different, and drastic option, for China.
Read More »China Isn’t for Everyone, Maybe Not Even Nvidia
What’s the Long-Term Outlook for Auto Chip Industry?
In the face of the seeming despondent industry dynamic, here’s why I contend there are good reasons to cheer the long-term outlook for the industry
GM Rips Away the Cruise ‘Band-Aid’
We got Phil Koopman, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and Bryan Reimer, research scientist, as our podcast guests to discuss how GM’s decision to end its Cruise experiment affects the future of ADAS, robotaxis and personal autonomous vehicles (PAV).
With AI accelerator integrated, ST Calls New MCU a ‘3rd Seminal Moment’
What’s at stake:
As MCU suppliers struggle with bloated inventory, ST is turning to AI at the edge. But is ST’s newly launched NPU-accelerated MPU a big enough leap to save the company’s MCU business? Remi El-Ouazzane, President of the Microcontrollers, Digital ICs and RF Products Group (MDRF) at STMicroelectronics believes so.
The MCU market is in turmoil.
The first symptom is the overall MCU business climate.
Declining demand for automotive MCUs forced Microchip CEO Ganesh Moorthy to retire last month, announced in tandem with Microchip’s decision to close its Arizona fab.
Similarly, amid similar inventory challenges and market pressures, STMicroelectronics reported a whopping 41 percent decline in its third quarter MCU sales. In parallel, ST faced increased competition from Chinese MCU manufacturers and the diminishing demand for factory and industrial automation in Europe.
Read More »With AI accelerator integrated, ST Calls New MCU a ‘3rd Seminal Moment’
ST Looks Beyond Troubled MCU Waters
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake:
STMicroelectronics is resetting market expectations for its intermediate term performance. It’s a good move for the company, considering the challenges it faces in key market segments. Executives believe the company’s strong technology portfolio, IDM structure complimented by foundry partners and intense focus on key markets will help it achieve goals set years ago. Resetting goals may be a brilliant move but a tactical retreat and regrouping may prove even more critical to achieving the new objectives. Will ST deliver?
STMicroelectronics NV believes it will be a $20 billion company by 2030. For now, though, Jean-Marc Chery, president and CEO at ST, won’t say what revenues the company will have in 2025 and 2026.
Chery calls 2025 “a transition year” for ST. Go ahead and add 2026 – with or without Chery’s consent. ST will by the end of 2024 fall $4 billion short of its record revenue of $17.3 billion in 2023. The CFO believes ST will cross that threshold again in 2027 or 2028.
Take your pick.
By 2030, though ST expects revenue to be about $20 billion, a goal set years before. By then, Chery, now 64 years old, will likely have moved on, no longer CEO at ST. If you were to pose a question to the CEO in 2030, someone else will have to answer in Chery’s titular name. That’s the way this game is played.
Read More »ST Looks Beyond Troubled MCU Waters
Can South Korea Get ‘Processing-in-Memory’ to Stick?
By Peter Clarke
What’s at stake:
Processing-in-memory (PIM) has not yet lived up to its potential due to the market strength of incumbent computing architectures and the cost efficiencies of keeping logic and memory manufacturing separate. A number of startups targeting their AI processors at the “edge” are now using variations on the PIM approach within embedded memory on their system-on-chip processors, but most use CMOS logic, and they cannot target the densest form of memory, DRAM. If Samsung and SK Hynix can standardize DRAM components to include PIM then the technique could transform AI processing.
South Korea’s semiconductor leaders Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are working together to standardize processing-in-memory (PIM) in the form of an LPDDR6-PIM DRAM, according to Business Korea. The tasks such a chip might do include some of the highly parallel mathematics operations that are part of machine learning, neural networks and artificial intelligence (AI).
Read More »Can South Korea Get ‘Processing-in-Memory’ to Stick?
Accelerating IoT Innovation with Pre-Certified Wi-Fi Modules
To accelerate innovation and extend the real-world benefits of the IoT, device makers need solutions that simplify development.
AI Past, Present, and Future (Part 2)
By Clive (Max) Maxfield
What’s at stake:
As artificial intelligence advances at a breakneck pace, we are standing at a crossroad where the line between science fiction and reality blurs. How will we navigate the ethical, economic, and personal impacts of artificial intelligence innovations? To understand where we’re heading, we first need to explore where we’ve come from and consider the present-day breakthroughs that are defining the world of our future.
In Part 1 of this mini-series on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), we predominantly pondered the days of AI Past. We commenced in the 1700s by considering some of the automata — self-operating machines or control mechanisms designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations or respond to predetermined instructions — that were created at that time.
Read More »AI Past, Present, and Future (Part 2)
Infineon on Tightrope Chasing AI Power and ‘Green’
By Kolade Ojo
Infineon Technologies Inc. faces a paradox. It must successfully juggle two challenging and potentially conflicting objectives.
The first – powering AI – represents a lucrative business opportunity while the second – sustainable manufacturing – has become a major societal obligation in a world concerned about climate change and global warming. Both goals are desirable, but neither can be easily achieved by a chipmaker serving the hot artificial intelligence and power markets from locations in a country passionate about the impact of manufacturing on the environment.
Read More »Infineon on Tightrope Chasing AI Power and ‘Green’