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Issues dealing with the development of automotive electronics.
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The automotive industry is in the midst of rapid change on many fronts. OEMs are exploring new functions and features to add to their vehicles, including chiplets, electrification, autonomous features, as well as new vehicle architectures that will determine how vehicles are going to be designed from the foundation up. But all of this is dependent on the relationships between all of the ecosystem players involved.

Known for its use of conservative, reliable, older chips, the automotive industry has adopted a whole new philosophy. It now is looking to include some of the most advanced chips, providing they can be certified to automotive standards. Some of these ICs will find their way into electric and autonomous vehicles, where leading-edge digital logic, advanced packaging, and sophisticated AI algorithms are potential game-changers.

The opportunity is potentially enormous, and investors around the globe are placing their bets on new chips, sensors, materials that can withstand high voltages, power management controllers, AI, new car network architectures, and radar and lidar improvements. In this mix are MCUs, DSPs, SoCs, AI accelerators, data and network processing units, as well as memory.

Underlying all of this is the increasing electrification of vehicles, where chips and electrical systems are used to improve safety, improve the overall driver experience, and ultimately reduce a vehicle’s carbon footprint. This is a mammoth task, and it requires an equally broad shift in technology, including:

  • Using new materials, such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), for making chips that can withstand higher temperatures at higher voltages;
  • Managing power use to improve range and efficiency;
  • Reducing the weight of the car, which means fewer wires, more shared resources, more efficient and smaller electronics, and new architectures;
  • Developing ways to move data more efficiently and to make decisions faster and increasingly autonomously;
  • Connecting the car wirelessly to external infrastructure;
  • Improving sensors and sensor systems at a lower cost;
  • Improving driver controls and feature offerings, some through subscriptions, and
  • Making cars safer, more resilient to failure, and more secure

The automotive supply chain is therefore becoming more complex and collaborative, changing longstanding relationships between automakers and their suppliers in ways that would have seemed unimaginable even a couple of years ago.

Chiplets are also turning the whole automotive ecosystem upside down. Fundamentally, the industry needs chiplets because Moore’s Law doesn’t work across all applications. A fundamental part of this is manufacturing and the role of the foundry in chiplets and within the ecosystem to bring everyone together. Good relationships are key to generating value. Even with the various business model configurations, all of these companies are trying to get to the same place. Meanwhile, design chains are overlapping and shifting.  Collaboration is no stranger to the supply chain, but the amount and complexity of that collaboration is growing. And in addition to established companies, newcomers definitely want to be a part of the automotive action.

Consumers expect a lot from the electronics in their cars. The parts in the safety-critical systems need to be reliable for up to 18 years, able to handle a range of temperatures, voltages, and vibrations — and all the while be fault-tolerant and make zero errors. On top of those basic requirements, automakers trying to appeal to consumers are adding in more features that communicate with the outside world, automate some driving tasks, warn and monitor the driver, and entertain the passengers. Better relationships within the automotive ecosystem benefit companies and also create value for the end consumer. Greater collaboration also means consumers benefit from lower prices.

Tier 0.5 is resulting in various adjustments in the automotive ecosystem. Tier 0.5 is a very tight cooperation between the OEM and the Tier 1, and is set to change the design chain and power dependencies even further. OEMs are also evolving toward new vehicle architectures, which affects the ecosystem. And software-defined vehicles are impacting the ecosystem because SDV requires many inter-dependencies, and the entire ecosystem has to have an understanding of the ‘why,’ which should then lead back to laying out the plan for how to get there.

Overall, the main technical challenges facing the automotive ecosystem include hardware/software complexity, cross-application requirements, thermal issues, reliability, safety and security, as well as cloud computing and 5G, which is how cars will be connected to the outside world.

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Toward Software-Defined Vehicles

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Sensor Fusion Challenges In Automotive

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Changes And Challenges In Auto MCUs

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Choosing The Right Memory At The Edge

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Adding Security into Test

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Sensor Fusion Everywhere

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End-To-End Traceability

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Changes In Auto Architectures

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Making Lidar More Useful

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Shifting Auto Architectures

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IP Safe Enough To Use In Cars

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Who Owns A Car’s Electronics Architecture?

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Automotive Chip Design Workflow

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Ensuring Functional Safety In Design

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3 Safety Standards for Auto Electronics

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SLAM: Simultaneous Localization & Mapping: Track objects and match features

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SOFIT & Autonomous Design

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ISO 26262 Drilldown

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Traceability In Functional Safety

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Tech Talk: Embedded Flash For Cars

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ISO 26262 Statistics

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Tech Talk: Automotive Design