Opinion

AV Technology Is Not s Bowl of Cherries.

AV Technology Is Not a Bowl of Cherries

Featured, Opinion

What’s at stake:
Cruise’s playbook has helped shatter public confidence in automated vehicles. We now wonder if there is a new playbook in the works – consisting of concrete actions – for every AV company so that they won’t make the same mistakes

Two days after the California DMV ordered it to suspend its San Francisco driverless taxi service, Cruise “proactively” bit the bullet and “paused” robotaxi operation nationally.

Now Cruise is going to “take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.”

Here’s hoping the company will put its commitment where its mouth is.

Arm Up, RISC-V Down, But The Real Loser Is x86

Featured, Opinion

By Peter Clarke

What’s at stake:
Although application-specific processing and neural-network architectures are becoming more significant with each passing year, established microprocessor architectures and their support of specific software bases remain significant. They have fostered and dominate big consumer markets such as personal computing and mobile phones. The conventional wisdom is that, just as Arm – once agile and without legacy baggage – could come to rival the original processor pioneer architecture x86, the open-source RISC-V is going to do the same to the now less agile and more encumbered Arm architecture.

Last week was one of contrasting fortunes for the microprocessor architectures Arm and RISC-V.

Pet Robots vs Robotaxis

Featured, Opinion

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Never underestimate pet robots. Sure, they’re toys and they’re adorable . But they foreshadow a future in which people need to communicate, interact and establish relationships with machines.

I’ve been back “home” in Japan for less than a week, during which I’ve been repeatedly reminded — again — of this country’s eternal fascination with robots, and with how people here tend to fall in love with anything cute.

I refer, of course, to Nicobo, a cuddly robot developed by Panasonic and released last May.

Goodbye, Intel

Featured, Opinion

By Peter Clarke

What’s at stake:
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is betting on the future of Intel with some bold moves. He has now been in place long enough – since February 2021 – for shareholders, customers and analysts to start to judge Gelsinger by what he does rather than by what he says, which often sound too optimistic.

Intel Corp.’s announcement that it plans to operate the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) as a separate business from January 1, 2024 with a view to an IPO within three years, has revealed an asset-sale trend.

Dig Deeper Podcast: Chip Makers Map a Sustainable Future

Featured, Opinion

The energy-intensive semiconductor industry aims to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050. It must first transform aspirational goals into climate action.

Welcome Back, Intel

Featured, Opinion

By Peter Clarke

Last month. a couple of things happened that provide support to the idea that Intel could catch up with rivals Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics in chip manufacturing technology.

One was the opening of Intel’s Fab34 in Leixlip, Ireland, and the start of mass-production of 4nm chips there. The other was the speculation that TSMC is delaying the ramping of its 2nm manufacturing process in Taiwan until 2026.

Why does it matter: Because much of US foreign and commercial policy depends on the country having a semiconductor technology leader and minimizing dependence on southeast Asia, which it apparently acknowledges as China’s sphere of influence.

A (Very) Brief History of Consciousness

Featured, Opinion

If we understand the mechanism of subjective experience, we could choose, or not, to put it into AI.

Nobody Puts Beijing in a Corner

Featured, Opinion

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Phrases like “decoupling,” “de-risking” and “China for China” – coined and overused in recent commentaries – reveal how Western business leaders’ struggle to come up with China strategies that justify their actions. It’s time to think beyond trade jargons. The business community needs to start articulating how it wants to work with China.

Many executives in the West already know that “decoupling” is simply silly when the foundations of an industry like semiconductors are built on international markets and a global supply chain.

“De-risking” illustrates Western corporations’ current trepidation toward doing business with China. Corporate leaders can’t predict the Chinese Communist Party’s next move, and they worry about fresh sanctions imposed on China by the United States.

AI: Artificial or Alchemical Intelligence?

Featured, Opinion

By David Benjamin

“Reynard affirmed that he had sent her majesty the queen a comb made of panthera bone ‘more lustrous than the rainbow, more odiferous than any perfume, a charm against every ill, a universal panacea.”

— Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, in reference to Hinreck van Alckmer, Reynard the Fox (1498)

According to Greek legend, Panacea, daughter of Aesculapius, god of medicine and healing, had powers to bestow on humanity the cure for everything that ails us. In English, a “panacea” solves everything.

In RISC-V World, Who Has Arm’s Legs?

Featured, Opinion

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
RISC-V’s momentum is established. The question now is who can accelerate the trend by playing the role Arm played in the global semiconductor industry in the early 1990’s.

Now that Arm’s IPO is over, we can breathe easier, look around and ponder who will become the semiconductor IP developer’s successor, this time in the RISC-V market.