By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Chiplets can advance the semiconductor industry by enabling system companies and semiconductor suppliers to mix and match chiplets manufactured by different foundries for heterogeneous integration. That concept, however, is also helping China to develop home-grown AI processors that could rival those manufactured by Western companies, currently banned from export.

Late last month, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published updated export controls covering advanced computing items and semiconductor manufacturing equipment under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

Buried within the dense bureaucratese was a reference to chiplets, a data point largely unreported in the tech media.

The agency’s updated export controls, set to go into effect on Nov. 17, 2023, added chiplet restrictions.

Read More »Can Chinese Chiplets Dodge Export Controls?

By Junko Yoshida and George Leopold

What’s at stake:
So far, Apple’s leadership toward net-zero emissions is a mixture of sincere advocacy, lip service and marketing deflection. Even as it prescribes remedies to suppliers and partners, it must also heal itself.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently visited NXP Semiconductors at its Eindhoven headquarters.

This triggered a posting outburst by NXP’s social media team, including a photo of CEO Kurt Sievers with Cook posing near a workbench in what looks like a design/engineering room. NXP’s LinkedIn post called Cook’s visit “truly historic.”

Indeed, capturing Sievers and Cook together in a single frame was a “photo op” to make any corporate PR marketing team drool and apply adjectives like “historic.”

More historic, though, is the photo’s context.

Read More »Ask Not What Apple Net Zero Can Do For You …

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
It’s good to remember that for most utterances in life, whether you are a politician, a tech company, or a big-time CEO, it’s the half-truths you spout — to the public, to regulators, the media and customers — that get you into trouble.

Of course, some people get away with the flim-flam. Most of us, however, figure out early what the safest — if not the most lucrative — policy is.

In that spirit, the California Dept. of Motor Vehicles (DMV) this week announced the immediate suspension of General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi operation in San Francisco.

Read More »G.M. in S.F.: Cruise in for a Bruisin’

By Bolaji Ojo

Nvidia Corp. and Arm Holdings can’t seem to get away from each other.

The AI chip giant and the semiconductor intellectual property developer are in the news again this week. This time, the report is about a speculative multi-party tango about the purported planned development of a new Arm-based PC central processing unit (CPU) by Nvidia.

Read More »Nvidia-Arm: Where is this Relationship Headed?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Prophesee is the little engine that could. By launching its fifth-generation event-based imaging sensor and going after the consumer mass market, the French startup run by Luca Verre is demonstrating its resilience. Nothing could deter CEO Verre and his team from leaving any stone unturned in search of a market fit for its neuromorphic vision systems. The unknown is whether AR/VR is the segment that can open the volume market to Prophesee and, if so, how long might it take.

In 2014, a unique bio-inspired vision technology was an asset big enough to convince a team of scholars and a businessman to establish Prophesee.

Prophesee didn’t invent neuromorphic computing. But it has become a pioneer in commercially implementing its principle: Humans don’t record the visual information based on a series of frames. Instead, they capture the stuff of interest – spatial and temporal changes – and send that sparse information efficiently to the brain.

Prophesee has done a yeoman’s work pitching event-based sensors to neophytes, but its efforts have yet to build the mass market. 

Read More »Prophesee Emboldens Its Mass Consumer Outreach

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Never underestimate the power of a regulator, especially one armed with a Congressional mandate — and money — to make the roads safer for all users. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill boosted NHTSA’s budget by 50 percent. Observers say the agency is poised to issue regulations with teeth.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is oft criticized for being too slow and cautious in mandating ADAS technology among its regulations. Worse, it has left too much implementation to voluntary agreements with the auto industry.

“This changed on May 31 with NHTSA’s announcement of adding both Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) and pedestrian AEB (PAEB) to New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and as Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) regulation,” said Egil Juliussen, principal analyst at VSI Labs.

Read More »Tension Builds As Auto Industry Awaits Reborn ADAS Specs

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Technologies to build 2D and 2.5D multi-die chips have existed for almost a decade. Yet, demand for chiplets languished until the dawn of the generative AI era. Nvidia’s AI processors have swept the market, triggering a change so abrupt that foundries and Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) companies are left flat-footed. At stake now is how long aspiring chiplet vendors can wait, and whether going to China for chiplet production is an option.

As global chiplet demand soars, the shortage in production capacity has focused sharply for developers of AI processors, high-performance computing chips and automotive OEMs/Tier Ones looking for scalable, automotive semiconductor designs.

Read More »It’s the Chiplet Derby … Without Enough Horses