By Bolaji Ojo

12 years ago, Nvidia Corp. placed a huge wager on artificial intelligence (AI). Payday came recently in the form of a historic valuation on Wall Street.

But the company had barely a week to celebrate its new status as the world’s most valuable semiconductor company before it became clear it will have its hands full defending its position in the AI market.

Read More »AI Rivalry Heats up, But Catching Nvidia Won’t Be Easy

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
The partnership between MediaTek and Nvidia clarifies a gap in the automotive SoC platform. Missing are a unified software development environment and a hardware solution that can scale both up and down. Who has an argument and actual solutions good enough to convince undecided carmakers to adopt their platform?

The recent Nvidia-MediaTek deal to partner on automotive SoCs reveals the intensity of the rivalry among Qualcomm and other automotive chip companies. Nvidia’s move is a clear effort to catch up with Qualcomm. 

It also indicates that many mainstream car OEMs haven’t picked sides on the next-generation automotive platform, opening an opportunity that MediaTek can’t afford to miss. 

Read More »Qualcomm Envy Sparks Nvidia-MediaTek Deal

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Running updated software properly in an existing vehicle sometimes demands a hardware upgrade — replacing, for example, a 3G modem with a 4G cellular modem. Are carmakers ready for this sort of mass retrofit?

Robert Hollingsworth is not happy with BMW. The German automaker declined to upgrade a 3G cellular modem in Hollingsworth’s BMW X5 after all major US cellular operators shut down the legacy network support in 2022.

Yet, the software-defined vehicles is the thing today, among many car OEMs.

Read More »Obsolescence at BMW: Planned or Just Short-Sighted?

By Bolaji Ojo

The semiconductor market downturn is still raw but it’s party time in Munich and Geneva.

Read More »Infineon and ST Buck Chip Downturn but for How Long?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Highly automated vehicles present a frightening conundrum when a Computer Driver shares the steering wheel with a Human Driver. Which party is responsible for driving? How and when do the robot and the person switch roles? At stake is the Human Driver’s liability. Automakers prefer the human as the fall guy, leaving jurors to decide without clear legal standards if a Computer Driver, when it bails out, imposed an unreasonable demand on the Human.   

Read More »Robo-Driving Handover Time: Pick a Number

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The growing technical complexity of highly automated vehicles might soon make product liability a relic of the past. At stake is the right of consumers to seek justice when wronged by a robocar.

Brace yourselves. We seem to be approaching an era when a product liability claim would no longer be a viable avenue for recovery — particularly in lawsuits against autonomous vehicle (AV) manufacturers.

Suppose you’ve been injured by a state-of-the-art AV in a crash.

You think about taking the robocar’s maker to court, to argue that your pain was caused by a manufacturing or design defect. The idea is to hold the manufacturer financially responsible for the loss caused by the defect which led to the crash.

Fuhgeddaboudit.

Read More »Imitation Driver, Imitation Game

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Carmakers see a big opportunity for software-defined vehicles and subscription-based services that “update” and “upgrade” vehicles after purchase. Can OEMs justify lifetime software support for their vehicles’ safety and security, or will third-party repair services pop up to magically fix complex machine-learning based software problems? Or will carmakers simply limit production and shorten a model’s lifespan, leaving many perfectly operative used cars – lacking safety software updates – in the junkyard?

Read More »Why Send Software Updates to Used Cars?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
As a slew of power electronics semiconductor companies pour billions of dollars into silicon carbide (SiC) production, Bosch, the German automotive Tier One, is making clear its intention to crash the SiC party. But why would Bosch want to come to the U.S., rather than building a resilient SiC supply chain in Germany?

Bosch this week announced plans to acquire assets of the U.S. chip manufacturer TSI Semiconductors in Roseville, Calif. The deal would convert TSI facilities currently offering a full range of logic CMOS process technologies into a U.S. manufacturing site. There, the German company would produce SiC chips on 200-millimeter wafers starting in 2026.

But what’s behind Bosch’s move?

Read More »Bosch: Why Produce SiC in the U.S.?