Week 39: How Safe Is Your Car?


In the age of increased connectivity, security is a major concern for all of us. Every few weeks seem to bring news of another massive breach, making it impossible not to be wary of the security threats we face every day when paying with our credit or debit cards online or in a store. There are so many examples that I’ve occasionally wondered whether I should go back to cash payments. For now... » read more

AUTOSAR And FlexRay


This paper describes ways tools are quickly becoming the foundation for optimization processes that help engineers design profitable automotive products more efficiently than ever before. Standards are the enabling platform for the modern computer-based design tools that have transformed industries around the world. AUTOSAR is a leading effort to bring some standardization to the software platf... » read more

What Ford Is Driving


Jim Buczkowski, director of electrical and electronics systems research and advanced engineering at Ford Motor Co., sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about quality, security, architectures, packaging and automotive's unique constraints. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: As more electronic content is included in automobiles, what kinds of issues are you dealing... » read more

NXP To Buy Freescale For $16.7B


By Ann Steffora Mutschler & Ed Sperling Dutch semiconductor giant NXP Semiconductors will buy Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor for $16.7 billion—$11.8 billion in cash, $5.6 billion worth of debts, minus $696 million in cash reserves—creating a combined company with a broad-based product portfolio and projected annual revenue of more than $10 billion. Given the size of the deal... » read more

Custom Versus Platform Design


The increase in [getkc id="81" kc_name="SoC"] complexity is being mirrored by a rise in complexity within the markets that drive demand for those chips. The upshot is that a push toward greater connectivity, lower power and better performance—and all for a minimal cost—has turned the pros and cons for custom design vs. platforms and superchips into a murky decision-making process. For t... » read more

Self-Driving Cars?


The dream of hopping in your car and lounging on a bench seat that faces sideways or backward while it delivers you to your destination is a really nice idea. It's akin to upgrading from economy class seat on an airline to your own private jet. But this idea also faces some huge hurdles. First and foremost is liability. If an autonomous vehicle gets into an accident, who's responsible? If it... » read more

Round-Trip Engineering Key To AUTOSAR-based Development


This paper discusses how round-trip engineering can be used as an iterative development process and describes interoperability between tools from Mentor and MathWorks. Model-based design has become an important component in vehicle manufacturer and supplier development processes. Electronic control units are complex in terms of functionality, connectivity, and variants; therefore automotive ... » read more

Low Power Everything


A decade ago, former International Rectifier CEO Alex Lidow pronounced that there were three main categories for saving energy on a mass scale—variable speed motors, fluorescent lighting, and more efficient servers. He was right at the time. Those weren't necessarily semiconductor-driven markets, but they were the place where the most power could be saved. In fact, at the time, the rough e... » read more

Designing For Automotive


As cars include an increasing amount of electronics and electronics subsystems, the number of design challenges involving reliability, cost and power are on the rise. “Reliability tops the list of concerns for the design team because when you put these electronics in, you must know if they are going to operate efficiently by themselves," said Aveek Sarkar, vice president of product enginee... » read more

Cross-Market Security Issues


The real attractiveness of the Internet of Things is the ability to leap across communications barriers. Roll back just 15 years ago and carmakers offered special car phones as an option on high-end vehicles. Roll back 20 years ago and connectivity was so slow that you could hear your modem connecting with the modem on the other end. The widespread adoption of the cell phone, and the pervas... » read more

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