Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Automotive, mobility
The Lancet’s Road Safety 2022 report estimates that 1.35 million people die every year from road traffic injuries, with more than 50 million injured or disabled. Low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) have the most deaths, accounting for 93% of the world’s fatalities on roads. The four main risk factors for road injuries are speeding, impaired driving (drunk driving), not using a helmet (for motorcycles), and not using seatbelts or child restraints.

The global automotive chip market will be worth US$92.21 billion in 2026, up from US$52.53 billion in 2021, according to ReportLinker. The report says the key players in the global automotive chip market are NXP, Infineon Technologies, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, ROHM Semiconductor, Toshiba Corporation, Robert Bosch, Qualcomm, Microchip Technology, ON Semiconductor, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Analog Devices (Maxim Integrated).

Renesas and AI chipmaker Hailo are working together on a hardware combo for motor-vehicle driving-automation systems — the ADAS (advanced driver-assistance systems) and ADS (automated driving systems). The companies are combining the Hailo-8 processors for accelerating neural networks with Renesas’ R-Car V3H & R-Car V4H systems-on-chip (SoCs).  The solutions scale from ADAS L2+ up to L4 AD functions, for zonal and centralized vehicular ECUs.

Cadence debut two new DSP IP cores into its Tensilica ConnX family of radar, lidar and communications DSPs, targeting automotive, consumer, and industrial markets. Tensilica ConnX 110 (128 bit) and ConnX 120 (256 bit) DSPs have an N-way programming model.  The DSPs are supported by complex math library functions in the NatureDSP, Eigen, and Radar libraries. The ConnX 120 offers Viterbi and Turbo decoders The ConnX DSPs are automotive-ready with full ISO 26262 compliance to ASIL-D with FlexLock or to ASIL-B.

Cadence also announced its Xcelium Apps portfolio, which work natively on Cadence’s Xcelium Logic Simulator kernel for automotive, mobile, and hyperscale design teams. Apps include Xcelium Machine Learning, Mixed-Signal, Multi-Core, Safety, Power Playback, and X-Pessimism Removal. That last app is about shortening debug time using algorithms “to make the propagation of ‘X’ values in simulation more accurate.”

Bus and truck manufacturer Scania will use Keysight‘s Scienlab Battery Test Solutions for its new state-of-the-art battery laboratory at its new research and development facilities in Södertälje, Sweden. The facility will test battery technology for EVs. Scania is part of the Volkswagen Group.

Renesas is working with Tata Group companies Tata Motors Ltd. (TML) and Tejas Networks in India to develop automotive electronics, especially for EVs and connected vehicles. Tejas and Renesas will collaborate on wireless network hardware, such as radio units.

Pervasive computing
CEVA and Flex Logix created a silicon implementation of the CEVA-X2 DSP that can change its instruction set.  The silicon implementation, an ASIC called the CEVA SOC2, uses Flex Logix’s EFLX embedded FPGA (eFPGA) connected to a CEVA-X2 DSP instruction extension interface. Bar-Ilan University SoC Lab, which is a member of the HiPer Consortium, backed by the publicly funded Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA), designed and taped out the SOC2 for TSMC 16 nm technology. “The SOC2 contains two processing clusters, each containing, two CEVA-X2 DSP cores and EFLX eFPGA for programming and executing DSP instructions extensions, connected using the CEVA-Xtend mechanism. Flex Logix and CEVA’s mutual customers can now confidently utilize custom instructions to extract more value from their ASIC by being able to target different DSP applications on top of communication and sound with a customizable ISA post manufacturing,” said Erez Bar-Niv, CEVA’s CTO, said in a press release.

Infineon acquired verification expert NoBug in Romania and Serbia to strengthen its IoT product dev team, the Connected Secure Systems (CSS) Division.

Synopsys optimized its design and verification tools and IP for the latest Arm v9 architecture-based SoCs, the Cortex-A715, Cortex-A510, and Cortex-X3 CPUs and Immortalis-G715, Mali-G715, and Mali-G615 gaming-optimized GPUs. Synopsys’ Digital Design Family, Verification Family, and Interface IP (controllers and PHYs) in the form of QuickStart Implementation Kits (QIKs) for 5, 4 and 3nm are helping early adopters achieve PPA targets, according to a press release. The Arm v9 SoCs are being used in mobile applications in laptops, smartphones, gaming, and augmented/virtual reality.

Cadence also is working with Arm to optimize tools for Arm Total Compute Solutions 2022 (TCS22), which are the Arm Cortex-A715 and Cortex-X3 CPUs and the Arm Mali-G715 and Immortalis-G715 GPUs. Cadence delivered RTL-to-GDS digital flow Rapid Adoption Kits (RAKs) for 5nm and 7nm nodes.

Siemens and NVIDIA are connecting the Siemens Xcelerator, the open digital business platform with physics-based digital models, and NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for 3D-design and collaboration, for use in industrial settings. The goal is to enable customers of all sizes to create digital twins with real-time data and software-defined AI systems. The platforms provide ways to create industrial IoT systems and help customers glean insight from analytics. Siemens Digital Industries Software recently announced that it is expanding its Xcelerator platform to be useful to all businesses that need to bring physical and digital worlds together by helping to breakdown silos between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) teams.

Infineon launched a battery-powered AI/ML-based acoustic event detection and sensor fusion alarm system.

Renesas and embedded speech system provider Cyberon are putting voice user interface (VUI) interface into Renesas’ RA MCU line. The VUI will support over 40 global languages. RA MCU users will have access to Cyberon’s VUI toolchain. Renesas is developing a Voice Reference Hardware Platform for prototyping voice interfaces. The platform will not need a network connection using Cyberon’s DSpotter tool, which has a phoneme-based modelling approach. Other features include a power saving Voice Activity Detection (VAD), Voice Audio Playback and (VAP) to enable voice input and voice responses, among other features.

Canon is using AMD’s Versal AI Core series, with AMD AI Engine technology, to process 3D video images in real-time for Canon’s Free Viewpoint Video System used in sports broadcasting. The video system will enable viewers access to different camera angles and the ability to slow down the video.

Read more news at Manufacturing, Test and Design, Low Power.

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