Driving Toward A Sustainable Future


While the automotive industry has been focused on developing innovative electric vehicle (EV) designs for years, there is a new sense of urgency today. Worldwide sales of EVs are increasing quickly1, growing by 46% in 2020 and by 160% in the first half of 2021. Consumer demand is an important factor, but equally important are government mandates. In 2021, the European Union introduced strict... » read more

Silicon Lifecycle Management’s Growing Impact On IC Reliability


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about silicon lifecycle management, how it's expanding and changing, and where the problems are, with Prashant Goteti, principal engineer at Intel; Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at Arm; Zoe Conroy, principal hardware engineer at Cisco; Subhasish Mitra, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University; a... » read more

New Challenges For Connected Vehicles


Connected vehicles are all about convenience and safety. Modern vehicles are connected to the Internet via wireless networks, consumer apps, and infotainment systems, and there is work underway to connect them over 5G to guided driving. But there also are challenges to making all of this work securely, safely, and as expected throughout the expected lifetimes of chips and systems. The goal i... » read more

Battery Management Getting Competitive For EVs


The success or failure of future electric vehicles will depend on where and how those cars are used, as well as significant advances in battery materials, energy density, and some very complex battery management systems. Battery power needs to be balanced, stored for extended times, and delivered to wherever it is needed most in real time. This is a huge challenge, and nearly everything in a... » read more

Standards And Threat Testing For Secure Autonomous Vehicles


Modern vehicles continue to move up through the levels of autonomy, as defined by The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). These definitions have been widely adopted across the industry and emerging vehicle technology is measured against this scale (figure 1). Fig. 1: An illustration from the Society for Automotive Engineers shows levels of autonomy. The closer we move towards level... » read more

Setting The Standard For Automotive Security


Vehicle systems and the semiconductors used within them are some of the most complex electronics seen today. In the past, electronics going into vehicle systems implemented flat architectures with isolated functions controlling various components of the power train and vehicle dynamics. These electronic systems communicated primarily through legacy bus interconnect protocols, like controller ar... » read more

Accelerating Automotive Safety Certification With ASIL Compliant Certified IP


By Pavithra C. Suriyanarayanan and Srini Krishnaswami The autonomous vehicle market is growing at a tremendous rate and functional safety in conventional, hybrid, and electric automobiles plays a significant role in achieving the required certification. Auto makers must go through numerous government regulations that call for increased safety and reliability all the way down to the component... » read more

Radar For Automotive: Why Do We Need Radar?


Communications and sensing technologies have transformed the automotive industry. More and more, cars include features and systems to interact with their environment, gaining awareness of the surrounding space, networking with each other and with the infrastructure, and detecting possible sources of danger. We can consider that vehicles have acquired their own “senses”: they know where they... » read more

Using Periodic Calibration Of Antennas to Ensure the Ongoing Performance Of OTA Systems


Seen or unseen, antennas are essential to virtually every aspect of our connected world. In any over-the-air application—communication, navigation, radar, and so on—signal quality is heavily dependent on the performance of the transmitting and receiving antennas. In addition, when testing any of today’s electronic devices for electromagnetic interference (EMI) and electromagnetic compatib... » read more

Optimize Designs And Mitigate Thermal Threats In High-Current Automotive Applications


By Melika Roshandell, Cadence Design overview Current density increases at the PCB/package level result in local temperature increases known as hotspots. In addition to highlighting the heat generated locally around and underneath certain components at the PCB or IC package level due to component power consumption, the Celsius Thermal Solver can calculate the heat generated by the Joule ef... » read more

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