Auto OEMs still feel supply squeeze, plan for future; Telit, Thales IoT marriage; Semtech and Sierra Wireless.
Pervasive computing, connectivity
Semtech Corporation announced that it will acquire Sierra Wireless, an IoT services company. The acquisition will combine Semtech’s LoRa end nodes and cloud service with Sierra Wireless’ cellular capabilities.
Telit will incorporate Thales’s cellular IoT products business under a new name Telit Cinterion, led by Telit. Telit Cinterion will be California-based IoT provider, offering an expanded IoT portfolio of products and services, including hardware, software, and connectivity bundles. The new company will focus on industrial IoT and end markets such as payment systems, energy, e-health, and security. Thales’s portfolio of cellular wireless communication modules, gateways, and data (modem) cards, ranging from 4G LTE, LPWAN to 5G will be part of the deal, along with Thales’s expertise in IoT security across SIM technology. Thales will receive a 25% stake in Telit Cinterion. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 2022. Telit Cinterion will spin off its automotive IoT unit after closing, as it focuses on industrial IoT.
Keysight and Nokia demonstrated 800 Gigabit Ethernet in a test at a Nokia event in Madrid, Spain in June 2022. The test included Keysight’s AresONE 800GE Layer 1-3 800GE line rate test platform and the Nokia 7750 Service Routing platform.
Cadence released verification IP (VIP) and system-level VIP for CXL 3.0, which should help accelerate designs of SoCs used in hyperscale applications.
Arm used Cadence’s Liberate MX Trio Characterization suite to check and improve the quality of its embedded memory instances and compilers. Arm previously used a brute force Monte Carlo simulations, according to a press release, and saw a 7X reduction in runtime characterization validation with Liberate MX Trio.
Imperas released open-source SystemVerilog RISC-V processor functional coverage library. The free riscvOVPsimPlus package, including the Imperas RISC-V Reference Model, latest test suites and instruction coverage analysis, including updates for the latest RISC-V ratified specifications is now available on OVPworld.
Renesas revealed its quick-start RZ/A3UL group of MPUs (microprocessor units) for high-definition human-machine interfaces (HMIs). The 1GHz RZ/A3UL is a 64-Bit MPU with an RTOS, designed for applications that require fast response time such as industrial equipment, home appliances, and office automation equipment with liquid crystal displays or control panels, as well as audio equipment and POS terminals. Renesas also announced 5V RX660 32-Bit MCUs offering superior noise tolerance for home appliances and industrial equipment exposed to high electromagnetic interference. The MCU is the first in the RX family with a built-in CAN FD controller for fast data communication.
Scientists at Fraunhofer IIS are helping cities become smarter by working with the municipality to define its needs. “At Fraunhofer IIS, we assume that every city, every region has its own individual challenges. We carry out regional analyses for local authorities, and in doing so we make use of new data sources such as geodata in order to determine the starting situation,” said Nadja Hoßbach in a recent blog.
Infineon’s has a new HYPERRAM memory chip with 16-bit extended version of the HyperBus interface with throughput to 800 MBps. The HYPERRAM 3.0 portfolio are high-bandwidth memories with low pin-count and low-power, suitable for applications requiring expansion RAM memory, including video buffering, factory automation, artificial intelligence of things (AIoT), and automotive vehicle-to-everything (V2X). HYPERRAM can also be used in applications requiring scratch-pad memory for intense mathematical calculations.
Security
Researchers from imec-COSIC and KU Leuven co-wrote a paper about breaking an instantiation SIKEp434, “which aims at security level 1 of the Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process currently ran by NIST, in about one hour on a single core.”
Cycuity used its Radix informational pathway tool to verify that the first open-source silicon root of trust OpenTitan has a secure OTP controller, writes Cycuity’s Jason Oberg in a blog.
Infineon announced a secure NFC tag that can be used to prevent product counterfeiting. The NFC4TCxxx tag has an open standard security architecture using AES-128 cryptography. It uses Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Differential Fault Analysis (DFA), which help in resisting physical attacks.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will have a workshop on “Security for 5G and beyond” on August 22, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland in ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The next meeting of the ITU-T Study Group 17 will take place on August 23 to September 2 in the same location. The workshop include will focus on 5G [IMT-2020] security gaps and new security directions for 6G [IMT-2030] and attempt to better understand the threat landscape and identify novel security concepts for 6G [IMT-2030].
Automotive, mobility
The ramifications of the chip shortage are still hitting the automotive industry. Toyota’s quarterly results showed mostly downward sales for 4th quarter compared with the same quarter last year. GM missed Wall Street estimates because it could not ship 100,000 cars of parts shortages. Automotive OEMs have caught on to the importance of the semiconductor and are paying more to make sure they have a supply, according to a story in Reuters.
GM plans to double the road mileage where its Super Cruise, a hands-free driver assistance technology, can be driven. The expansion includes combination of undivided and divided highway roads. These roads will have sections where the Super Cruise can be used. The Mother Road – U.S. Route 66; Pacific Coast Highway – CA Route 1; Overseas Highway – U.S. Route 1, and Trans-Canada Highway.
Verizon Connect uncorked its AI Dashcam for fleet managers. The dashcam can detect dangerous situations in real time and warn the driver. The drivers of company trucks may now be one of the most scrutinized of workers, with a road-facing camera and — if the company fleet managers upgrade — a driver-facing camera combined with data from the ADAS that detects tailgating, speeding, and other bad driver behavior. The camera’s AI, which is cloud based, has a driver-monitoring system (DMS) that can detect driver tiredness and distracted driving. Footage from the cameras is tagged by AI to mark the incidents of concern and sent automatically to the customer to review. An audible warning alerts the driver to a danger when driving or if the driver is driving poorly. Hopefully it does not remind the driver of riding parents. (You’re driving too fast!)
REGENT used Siemens Digital Industries Software’s cloud-based Xcelerator portfolio to design its zero-emission seaglider. The all-electric seaglider holds 12 passengers and looks like a seaplane but acts like a combo of a boat, hydrofoil, and low-flying aircraft. It is considered a wing-in-ground-effect (WIG) craft, which means it flies a few less than 10 feet off the water’s surface. It has a range of 180 miles on available battery technology, but that could increase to 500 miles with upcoming battery improvements. The plane hovers/flies at180 miles per hour.
University of Central Florida will use Ansys’ Ansys’ chemical kinetics and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation tools to analyze, test, and qualify the use of ammonia (NH3) as an alternate fuel to power zero-carbon jet engines. The program is funded by five-year grant of $10 million from the NASA University Leadership Initiative.
People, companies, industry groups
The UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) Consortium incorporated in the U.S. state of Delaware and added new board members Alibaba and NVIDIA. Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. (ASE), AMD, Arm, Google Cloud, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, and TSMC were already board members. The consortium is open for more members to join this open standards body for chiplets.
Accellera announced a Proposed Working Group (PWG) to look into a clock domain crossing (CDC) standard. “Currently, collateral generated from different CDC verification tools are not interoperable with each other. Our new Clock Domain Crossing Standardization PWG aims to address this issue. We look forward to input from the community and encourage all interested companies to join the PWG and provide guidance on the need for a standard in this area,” said Lu Dai, chair of Accellera in a press release.
Read more news at Manufacturing, Test and Design, Low Power.
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