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.

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:
Renesas is aiming for much higher sales and market value by 2030. CEO Shibata believes the goals are achievable but becoming a $20 billion revenue enterprise with six times the capitalization may not depend solely on the company. The cyclical market will also have to play ball.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The successful rollout of breakthrough technologies is often the raison d’être of startups. Yet, the more unfamiliar the technology, the tougher for a fledgling startup to get the world on board. So it has gone for Prophesee. Prophesee, nonetheless, is on the cusp of turning its event-based image sensor into mainstream image-capture features for smartphone cameras. The startup owes this progress to its two big partners. Sony put Prophesee through the wringer, forcing it to meet its stringent milestone schedule for event-based CMOS image sensor development. A new alliance with Qualcomm provides its Snapdragon platform to run Prophesee’s fusion software.

By teaming with Sony, the world’s largest CMOS image sensor company, and Qualcomm, which commands a 50-percent share of the mobile SoC market, Prophesee, a Paris-based startup, is finally finding a massive volume market for its unique event-based cameras in smartphones.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Can the automotive industry, hard hit by the global chip shortage, restore order to its chaotic and divided supply chain? General Motors and GlobalFoundries have devised a model they say can provide better visibility for demand and supply. Questions arise: Is the real motive for the new model just to cut out the middlemen? Will chip suppliers have a say? If so, at what cost?

General Motors Co. and GlobalFoundries (GF) have cut a deal. GF, the world’s fourth largest-earning foundry, is establishing a “dedicated capacity exclusively for GM’s chip supply,” while GM makes GF its preferred foundry. The deal compels GM’s semiconductor suppliers to manufacture chips exclusively at GF’s U.S. facility.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
2023 is turning into the year of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Forsaking the futile race to full autonomy, automakers have resorted to testing how much more automation technology they can cram into vehicles while charging more, promising software upgrades and selling consumers the claim that they’ve just bought a safer car.

There’s a catch. While car companies promise drivers more “freedom and convenience” — via eyes-off, hands-off features — they are finding ways to shirk responsibility when highly automated vehicles crash. 

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
AV companies in early 2023 are facing an unprecedented level of scrutiny. The city of San Francisco and federal safety regulators want to know a lot more about their technologies and how their systems are set up for safer operation on public roads. The authorities’ focus is less on the promise of AVs saving lots of lives in the long run, but on the records and operational data AV companies have yet to disclose.

The data – or its absence of it – has enabled progress for autonomous vehicle (AV) developers, despite the newness of the industry. Among the advancements they have made are public road testing, deployment of AVs without safety drivers, commercial rollout with paying passengers, and even the drafting of bills — extremely favorable to AV companies — for state legislatures.