150MM Alive and Kicking


Did you think chip making on 150mm wafers was a thing of the past? Think again. Many of the megatrends shaping our collective futures—mobility, autonomous driving and electric vehicles, 5G wireless communications, augmented- and virtual reality (AR/VR), and healthcare—depend on innovations created on the 150mm wafer size. While attention is often riveted on the race to the leading-edge n... » read more

Automakers Gear Up For Autonomy


Even though it’s going to be a number of years before autonomous cars are everywhere, the technology to make it happen is already rolling out in stages, giving the automotive ecosystem a chance to gear up as development happens. From electronic fleet management systems, which are already prevalent in semi trucks today, to more sophistication in passenger vehicle driver assistance features, it... » read more

Blog Review: Mar. 7


Synopsys' Amit Paunikar and Shaily Khare take a look at new features in LPDDR5, from improved data bandwidth and Deep Sleep Mode to WCK clock. Cadence's Paul McLellan dives into forward error correction, a technique for automatically correcting errors in transmitted network data, with a look at why it's important and how it works. In his latest embedded software video, Mentor's Colin Wall... » read more

Automotive IC Industry Trends


A trend that will continue in 2018 is the rise of the smart, autonomous car. As consumers and regulators demand more capability from automobiles, semiconductors have become the most critical part of these innovative solutions. But these chips, designed to bring safety and economy to the car’s operation, also bring complexity and higher requirements for reliability, requirements that have not ... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 17


Mentor's Puneet Sinha identifies the key challenges, along with cost reduction and optimization opportunities, that come with using electric powertrains in autonomous vehicles. Synopsys' Robert Vamosi examines the impact of limited cellular networks on autonomous cars, and new communications protocols that could address coverage gaps. Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in as Lucian Shifren o... » read more

Electronic Design For Reliable Autonomous Driving


In the area of advanced driver assistance systems, most car makers and their suppliers have laid out exciting road maps all the way to highly automated and fully automated driving in 5 to 10 years. But are the electronics keeping up with these ambitious plans? At least for the automotive industry as a mass market, the current design processes for microchips and systems are not yet ready. An ... » read more

Self-Driving Cars And Kobayashi Maru


Kobayashi Maru. If you know what I am talking about, you are a bona fide Star Trek fan. If not, let me indulge. Kobayashi Maru is a computer simulation for a training exercise in the fictional Star Trek universe, where Starfleet Academy cadets are presented with a no-win scenario. But they do have to make a decision. The primary goal of the exercise is to rescue a disabled civilian vessel... » read more

Self-Driving Cars At CES: The Future Of Transportation Is Here


CES 2018 attendees will get a new kind of tech demo in just a few weeks. When they hail Lyft to take them from the Las Vegas Convention Center across town, it will be a fully automated point-to-point vehicle getting them there. While we marvel now, today’s novelty will be tomorrow’s norm, though questions about the safety of autonomous driving persist. For the CES demo, a backup pilot wi... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 2


Robots imagine their future to learn By playing with objects and then imagining how to get the task done, UC Berkeley researchers have developed a robotic learning technology that enables robots to figure out how to manipulate objects they have never encountered before. The team expects this technology could help self-driving cars anticipate future events on the road and produce more intel... » read more

How Good Is 95% Accuracy?


Conventional, deterministic computers don’t make mistakes. They execute a predictable series of computations in response to any given input. The input might be mistaken. The logic behind the operations that are performed might be flawed. But the computer will always do exactly what it has been told to do. When unexpected results occur, they can be attributed to the programmer, the system manu... » read more

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