Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Automotive, mobility

Ford Motor Company revealed it lost $827 million in the third quarter because of parts shortages and unexpected supplier costs. Those shortages affected 40,000 to 50,000 vehicles. The company is shutting down its interest in its self-driving car unit Argo.ai, which it shared with Volkswagen since 2019. Ford will instead focus on advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS), which are not fully autonomous. Argo.ai will be shuttered and its employees moved to Ford or Volkswagen. VW also will no longer invest in Argo.ai.

Mobileye, the driver-assistance system company that was once part of Intel, went public again this week on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the ticker “MBLY.”  Intel is still Mobileye’s parent company.

The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Tesla for misleading claims that its cars were self-driving in autopilot mode, when in fact they were not, according to Reuters. The U.S. DOJ already looked into Tesla’s behavior and has three ongoing investigations. Meanwhile, Europeans are happy to buy Teslas.

American electric truck/SUV maker Rivian sent out a software update that has a kneel mode. Once enabled, “kneel mode automatically puts your R1T and R1S in a low ride height without you having to manually change to another drive mode.” The mode makes it easier for some people to get out of the high clearance truck or SUV, according to Rivian. The mode is turned on with a toggle button via the display screen.

Mullen, a southern California-based EV automotive manufacturer, will acquire the assets of electric vehicle company ELMS (Electric Last Mile Solutions), a bankrupt EV company. Mullen will acquire ELMS’ manufacturing plant in Mishawaka, IN, and all its inventory and IP. Mullen says the factory can produce up to 50,000 vehicles per year.

SOAFEE, an industry-led collaboration for an open-standards-based architecture for the software-defined vehicle launched by Arm, now has more than 50 members.

Pervasive computing

Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram and is run by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has mystified investors by continuing its plans to spend big money on projects when the economic slowdown looms and its own revenue is lower than last year. One of those projects is the metaverse, a project that will take a lot of engineering before it gets off the ground. After Wall Street lost $200B in value at the end of yesterday, Meta was down by 20% and could lose as much as $78B in market value.

TSMC worked with the EDA companies to add process flows that will benefit 5G chip designers. Synopsys, Ansys, and Keysight announced together their new millimeter wave (mmWave) radio frequency (RF) design flow for TSMC’s 16nm FinFET Compact (16FFC) technology. Cadence RFIC tools support TSMC’s N16RF design reference flow for its N16RF mmWave process technology.

Also certified on TSMC:

• Cadence’s Integrity 3D-IC platform for system planning, implementation, and system-level analysis, is certified for TSMC’s 3DFabric technologies.
• Cadence’s Virtuoso design platform for custom/analog IC blocks has a node-to-node design migration flow for TSMC’s advanced process technologies.
• Synopsys’ digital and custom design flows have achieved certification on the TSMC N3E process.
• Siemens EDA’s Calibre nmPlatform tool for IC physical verification sign-off is certified for TSMC’s advanced N4P and N3E processes.
• Siemens EDA’s Analog FastSPICE platform certified for N4P and N3E processes.
• Siemens EDA’s mPower analog software solution for transistor-level EM/IR sign-off is certified for TSMC’s N3E process.

The U.S. Department of Commerce started an IoT advisory board of 16 members from industry, academia, and consumer media to advise the federal Internet of Things Federal Working Group.

Siemens also launched cloud-native software for electrical design.

Brewer Science, meanwhile, developed a way to print cost-effective sensors that can measure contaminants in water and air.

And Infineon launched its XENSIV connected sensor kit, a connected sensor kit (CSK) for rapid prototyping and development of custom IoT systems. The kit has an MCU, based on the based on the PSoC 6.

Rambus announced that its PCIe 6.0 Interface Subsystem with PHY and controller IP is now available for high-performance data centers and AI SoCs. The of PHY and controller IP. It supports the latest version of the Compute Express Link (CXL) and has a data rate of up to 64 GT/s for high-performance workloads.

In addition, Murata Manufacturing used Ansys’ tools to develop electronic components for its wireless communication and mobility products.

Security

Interpol, the global police agency, says the metaverse could create new types of crime and take existing types of crime to higher levels.

A cyber-worm operation called Raspberry Robin has infected endpoint machines (more than 3,000 devices in the last 30 days in 1,000 organizations) by worming its way in through USBs.

An upcoming patch on Nov. 1 from the OpenSSL Project is supposed fix security flaws that have the potential to be as serious as Heartbleed.

More to check out on Semiconductor Engineering:

Read the latest automotive, security, and pervasive computing articles:

• Chip Challenges In The Metaverse
• Beyond Autonomous Cars
• EVs Raise Energy, Power, And Thermal IC Design Challenges
• Testing Chips For Security
• Auto Safety Tech Adds New IC Design Challenges
• DNA Edges Forward As Data Storage Option
• Startup Funding: September 2022

And check out the latest videos

• Testing 2.5D And 3D-ICs
• Heterogeneous Integration Issues And Developments
• Simplifying AI Edge Deployment
• Using eFPGAs For Security