Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Automotive, mobility

Siemens Digital Industries Software and climate-tech company sustamize devised a way to add carbon emissions data to Siemens Xcelerator. Siemens created its Teamcenter Carbon Footprint Calculator software to help teams measure, simulate, reduce, and track their product carbon footprint early in the development phase. The calculator uses sustamize’s Product Footprint Engine, which has a prepackaged CO₂ emission factors library. “Our collaboration with sustamize will enable customers to understand the environmental impacts of their products and processes early in the product development based on comprehensive, up to date, data,” said Eryn Devola, vice president of sustainability, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

Ansys delivered a commercial finite element analysis (FEA) solver that can speed up structural mechanical models — such as for the automotive industry. The FEA supports AMD Instinct accelerators, new GPUs for data centers and supercomputers. Ansys says it developed APDL code that interfaces with AMD ROCm libraries on Linux, which will support performance and scaling on the AMD accelerators.

Infineon Technologies signed a multi-year supply agreement with US-based II-VI Incorporated to expand the semiconductor company’s supplier base for silicon carbide (SiC) wafers. SiC, a compound of silicon and carbon, is used in industrial applications but is also increasingly found in e-mobility. SiC power semiconductors are used in main inverters in electric-vehicle drive trains, onboard battery charging units, and charging infrastructure. II-VI and Infineon are also working on the transition to 200mm SiC diameter wafers.

Researchers at the United States’ Department of Energy‘s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have sleuthed out a key material for fast-charging lithium-ion batteries in its search for a 15-minute-or-less vehicle charge. The material, a novel compound of molybdenum-tungsten-niobate, or MWNO, could replace graphite anodes used today. “Because of this sluggish lithium-ion movement, graphite anodes are seen as a roadblock to extreme fast charging. We are looking for new, low-cost materials that can outperform graphite,” said ORNL researcher Runming Tao in a press release. “Our approach focuses on nongraphite materials, but these also have limitations. Some of the most promising materials — niobium-based oxides — have complicated synthesis methods that are not well suited to industry.”

Qualcomm says its automotive design-wins pipeline — a estimated future size of awarded automaker programs from automaker and Tier-1 supplier forecasts, reached $30B as of Sept 22, 2022. The company attributed much of the rise to its Snapdragon Digital Chassis solutions.

The NHTSA estimates in an early release of 2022 traffic data that 20,175 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the United States so far this year, up 0.5 percent over the first half of 2021. The full death toll for 2021 in the U.S. was 42,915, up 10.5 percent from 2020.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has ordered Tesla to recall some Tesla models in which the power windows do not detect obstructions while closing. The windows are a hazard to anyone who has a limb in the way. Tesla plans to do an over-the-air (OTA) update to fix the problem.

Pervasive computing

RISC-V processor IP company Codasip is now a member of the OpenHW Group, where Codasip will contribute to standards for RISC-V formal verification.

Flex Logix will use Semifore, Inc.’s CSRCompiler software on Flex Logix’s advanced inference chip design. Flex Logix makes eFPGAs and AI inference chips and modules. Its InferX X1 is an AI edge inference accelerator that can handle high-volume applications. “These designs are highly complex, and the hardware and software interfaces are critical to performance and core functionality. Semifore’s CSRCompiler ensures the hardware and software interfaces function as expected, and that both the hardware and software teams can test interaction during chip development,” said Charlie Roth, vice president of hardware R&D, Flex Logix, in a press release.

AMD unveiled the new Ryzen 7020 Series and Athlon 7020 Series Processor lineup for mobile phones.

Infineon introduced a single-stage flyback AC-DC controller IC for battery charging. The ICC80QSG single-stage PWM controller is used in flyback topologies in combination with Infineon’s CoolMOS P7 Superjunction (SJ) MOSFET devices. The advantage designers can make battery chargers with scalable power designs of up to 130 W suitable for adapter, printer, PC, TV, monitor, set-top box, and audio amplifier applications.

Security

Riscure released its 2022.2 version of True Code software tool, which helps software developers to find and fix security vulnerabilities in embedded code. One of the updates expands the fault-injection attack simulations in True Code. Dev teams can to create test scenarios that can run automatically during the daily build process without the need for the physical hardware the software is developed for to find fault injection vulnerabilities early development.