China’s Ambitious Automotive Plans


China has big plans for cars—and other related markets. After years of trailing behind Japanese, European and U.S.-based carmakers in automotive technology, reliability, status, and even market share within its own political borders, the country is making a concerted push into internally developed and manufactured assisted- and self-driving vehicles. The strategy plays out well for China o... » read more

The Case For Combining CPUs With FPGA Fabrics


Given that the industry is beginning to reach the limits of what can physically and economically be achieved through further shrinkage of process geometries, reducing feature size and increasing transistor counts is no longer achieving the same result it once did. Instead the industry is, quite rightly, focusing on fundamentally new system architectures and making better use of available silico... » read more

eFPGA IP Density, Portability And Scalability


FPGA chip companies generally build a new generation of FPGAs every ~3 years when there is a major advance in process technology. They pick one foundry, one node, one variation of that node and do full-custom circuit design with typically the maximum or near-maximum number of metal layers in order to get the highest density FPGA they can. It takes them most of the 3 years to do the complex e... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Finance Farmobile has raised $18.1 million in a Series B round of funding, led by Anterra Capital and AmTrust Agricultural Insurance Services, bringing its total funding to more than $28 million. Existing investors also took part in the new round. The agricultural Internet of Things startup will use the money to expand its operations around the world. Farmobile provides agronomic and machine d... » read more

Medical IoT Heats Up


Ever since the IoT was first introduced as a concept, the possibility of using ordinary devices or chips for monitoring health has been mostly an unfulfilled promise. In fact, one of the biggest selling points of smart watches and other wearables initially was the ability to monitor everything from heart irregularities to sugar levels on a continuous basis rather than a once-a-year electroca... » read more

Big Trucks Go Electric, Autonomous


As the automotive ecosystem increases efforts across the board including commoditization as part of the ramp to autonomous vehicles, the news feed is replete with examples. In the area of big trucks, Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation (MFTBC), part of Daimler Trucks, said at the recent Tokyo Motor Show that it would electrify its complete range of trucks and buses in upcoming years. F... » read more

Recipe For Automotive IC Design Success


“Not a computer science project!” That’s how an automotive IC design manager I worked with once described IC design in a product definition meeting. I liked his viewpoint. What he meant was: This is a business, not an academic exercise or homework assignment. There are competitors, customers, and opportunity for success and failure. Despite the massive opportunity for the chip industry, d... » read more

Ethernet In Cars


The automobile is encountering possibly the biggest changes in its technological progression since the invention of the internal combustion engine nearly 150 years ago. Increasing levels of autonomy will reshape how we think about cars and car travel. It won’t be just a matter of getting from point A to point B while doing very little else — we will be able to keep on doing what we want whi... » read more

For SoC ISO 26262 Compliance, Should All EDA Tools Be TCL1?


ISO 26262, the automotive functional safety standard, requires the assessment of software tool confidence levels (TCLs) as either a TCL1, TCL2 or TCL3.  Part 8:2011, clause 11.4.5 of the ISO 26262 standard provides a methodology with guidance for software tool classification and qualification. It applies to software tools used for the development of safety-critical designs where it is essentia... » read more

Faster Commoditization In Cars


Sensors are at the heart of assisted and autonomous driving, but even before these devices hit the road the average selling prices of these components will have to fall far enough to be affordable to a mass audience. Achieving economies of scale is what has made the semiconductor industry successful over the past half century. It has enabled semiconductors to proliferate and for electronics ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →