What’s at stake?
The need for speed and bandwidth is driving advances in silicon photonics. An ecosystem is coalescing around the light-based interconnects, with startups emerging to push the technology as established players like Intel scale transceivers and related photonic components. Leveraging current chip design and fabrication processes will be key to unleashing an anticipated Cambrian explosion of photonics-driven applications.
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake?
With inflation rising globally, and amid concerns that central bankers’ countermeasures will hobble growth, the massive inventory buildup over the past year could prove problematic for the electronics industry. But the closer working relationships that OEMs, chipmakers and distributors cultivated during the supply-chain crisis could help ensure a soft landing as inventories are drawn down.
What’s at stake?
Simply cramming a mess of new, automated features into cars is hardly an automotive safety panacea. A more likely remedy is the U.S. traffic-safety agency’s proposed updates on a New Car Assessment Program. At issue is road safety for everyone, both inside and outside the vehicles, including pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.
What’s at stake?
High-profile technology investors are leaning on lawmakers, hoping to shake loose federal funding to revive U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. With negotiations on industry subsidies stalled, these influencers could tip the scales toward more federal funding for domestic manufacturers.
What’s at stake?
There is, indeed, a growing acceptance that big-brain chip suppliers – Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel/Mobileye – have already won the architecture battle for highly automated vehicles. Does that mean traditional automotive chip companies have surrendered? To the contrary. They still seem to be scheming for new angles to keep themselves relevant or beat rivals. Where in this turmoil will NXP’s new real-time automotive processors fit?
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake?
Fabless semiconductor companies have contributed to the industry’s growth but they’ also added to its complexity with their unwillingness, until now, to shoulder a larger part of the financial burdens associated with making their products. That is changing as a result of today’s acute shortages. The lessons learned now must not be discarded when the shortages ease.
What’s at stake?
Despite all the rhetoric about the artificial intelligent of things (AIoT), implementing AI inference in MCUs is still a stretch. Edge AI is “economically constrained as much as… physically constrained,” according to a market analyst. At stake is the future of MCU suppliers and AIoT OEMs. How long are they willing to stay in the game and how much are they investing?
What’s at stake:
As part of its climate agenda, the Biden administration is allocating billions in infrastructure funding to put more EVs on the nation’s roads. While seeding areas like EV battery research, it is also encouraging public-private partnerships to flesh out a sustainable transportation network.
What’s at stake?
Andes Technology, a Taiwanese CPU core IP company, began phasing out its proprietary processing architecture in favor of RISC-V in 2015, as it prepared to go public. Is adding RISC-V an option for Arm before its planned fiscal-2022 IPO? While Arm’s too-big-to-fail ecosystem makes this notion unlikely, can Arm convince investors and shareholders that it can continue to grow without an open-source instruction set architecture (ISA)?
What’s at stake?
Renesas is upping its stakes in power electronics at a time when all suppliers are beefing up production capacity. At stake is Renesas’ future. Can its use of 300mm wafers create enough of an edge to restore its manufacturing clout? More important, where is Renesas’ long-term plan to address the future of power electronics — namely, SiC and GaN?
