Chip Industry Startup Funding Annual Report & Analysis: 2022


Introduction New ideas fuel the semiconductor industry, and money enables those ideas. Tracking what startups get funded is one way to see which ideas are more viable and which problems need to be solved most urgently. In general, the more startups working on a solution to a particular problem, the greater the need for a viable solution — and the more likely one will be developed. Investo... » read more

Why Better Mapping Technology Is Critical To Autonomous Vehicles


Autonomous cars find the way to their destination using a number of critical technologies, including some version of a global position system and a central brain to interpret that and other data. But many of those technologies are not reliable or accurate enough today, and may not be for years to come. There are numerous reports of vehicles missing their stop, or trucks being guided into all... » read more

Startup Funding: October 2022


Investors poured $3.5 billion into 113 startup companies in October 2022, especially new battery technology, AI hardware, and faster memory access. Battery technology dominated the fundraising in October thanks to the U.S. Department of Energy and four funding rounds that exceeded $200M. The DOE awarded sizeable grants to help 20 companies, including six startups, build out battery material ... » read more

Startup Funding: February 2021


In February, several startups emerge from stealth, with one company working on AI inference architectures for the data center and another trying to make lenses thinner by patterning surfaces with tiny structures. Two new Chinese companies are trying to expand the country's semiconductor design ecosystem with GPUs and interface IP. Plus, a maker of AI chips for ADAS draws another massive round t... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 12


Complexity is growing by process node, by end application, and in each design. The latest crop of blogs points to just how many dependencies and uncertainties exist today, and what the entire supply chain is doing about them. Mentor's Shivani Joshi digs into various types of constraints in PCBs. Cadence's Neelabh Singh examines the complexities of verifying a lane adapter state machine in... » read more

Week in Review – IoT, Security, Autos


Products/Services Arm and Swift Navigation will collaborate on providing technology to developers of autonomous vehicles and connected cars. San Francisco-based Swift Navigation, which offers Global Navigation Satellite System positioning technology for AVs, is teaming with the chip design company to offer Swift’s solutions as an option on Arm-based platforms, the companies say. Swift’s St... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A ANSYS will acquire Livermore Software Technology Corp. (LSTC), a provider of explicit dynamics and other advanced finite element analysis technology. Based in Livermore, CA, LSTC was founded in 1987 to commercialize the DYNA3D technology developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. DYNA3D became the company's premier product LS-DYNA, a general purpose nonlinear finite eleme... » read more