Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Automotive, Mobility

The U.S. space agency NASA entered a $57.2 million contract with ICON to develop technology to build roads on the moon. ICON, a Texas-based 3D printing construction company, has been working with NASA and the U.S. Air Force on construction technologies that can use local materials to build infrastructure on Mars. NASA is working on advanced 3D printing construction systems for the Moon and Mars as part of the United States’ Artemis mission.

The first Lordstown Endurance Pickups — an EV — have left Foxconn’s production line in its Ohio EV plant.

The Vietnamese automaker Vinfast will import 999 EVs — its VF8 cars — into the U.S. soon.

South Korea’s LG Chem will build an EV battery material plant in the U.S. in Clarksville, Tennessee for $3.2 billion. The new cathode manufacturing plant will supply customers such as EV battery maker Ultium Cells (created by LG Energy Solution and General Motors).

Ericsson, Deutsche Telekom, BMW, Valeo, and Qualcomm collaborated on a proof of concept for 5G standalone (SA) network slicing with controlled network features for Quality of Service (QoS). Network slicing promised to enable network operators to allow more traffic on networks by slicing the network dynamically and allowing users to access the same network without ever interfering with each others’ slice. The team on the proof of concept says automotive companies can use network slicing for services such as automated parking.

Tesla’s market share of new registered EVs in the U.S. is waning, now at 65% versus 71% last year.

Over-the-air technology is still a relatively immature technology when it comes to safety-critical applications, introducing the potential for security gaps as vehicles grow increasingly software-defined.

Better mapping technology is critical to autonomous vehicles. Accuracy down to a couple centimeters with consistent connectivity will be required for AI systems to guide vehicles, but today’s technology is a long way from that.

Security

Riscure says it is launching new pre-silicon security tests in its Inspector product in January 2023.

Siemens Digital Industries Software introduced a software documentation package aimed at helping OEMs collect data for medical device compliance when using either of Siemens’ embedded Linux distributions, Sokol Flex OS software or Sokol Omni OS software. The package, called the Quality Package for embedded Linux, captures information needed to achieve regulatory approvals for safety and cybersecurity requirements, based on UL 2900 and other medical device specifications.

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC), Infineon, and the German Federal Printing Office demonstrated an electronic passport that is secure enough to repel attacks from quantum computers of the future. The design has quantum-resistant encryption procedures and a security controller from Infineon that protects data from both conventional attacks and attacks that use quantum computers.

Infineon also launched a 28nm security controller for payment applications, called SLC26P. Infineon will use TSMC to manufacture the chip.

The U.S. Department of Defense released its “Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap, “a framework for moving beyond relying on perimeter-based cybersecurity defense tools alone and basically assuming that breach has occurred within our boundary and responding accordingly,” said David McKeown, the department’s acting chief information officer.

Georgia Tech researchers introduced “a novel circuit identification method based on ‘fingerprints’ of periodic circuit activity that does not rely on any circuit-specific reference measurements.” They claim the 95% accuracy using the method.

Password manager LastPass suffered another breach, with the unauthorized party gaining access to customer information, emphasizing “customers’ passwords remain safely encrypted.”

Pervasive computing

Ericsson’s 2022 Mobility Report estimates that by 2028, 5G mobile subscriptions will reach 5 billion; broadband IoT (4G/5G) connections will dominate; and more than 300 million fixed wireless access (FWA) connections. FWA is a wireless alternative to broadband wireless access that is often used in more rural areas. FWA mostly serves more rural markets. Its rise, by 19% annually, will be feed by FWA adoptions in India. Also, according to the report, mobile network traffic doubled in last two years.

Asia-based RF IP design firm Gear Radio Electronics taped out a low noise amplifier (LNA) IC on the first pass, leveraging UMC’s 28HPC+ process technology and the Cadence RF solution. UMC’s 28HPC+ process is high-speed mmWave devices and provides silicon-accurate models for circuit applications up to 110GHz.

RISC-V processor IP company Codasip is working with Intel to give graduate and undergrad university students access to Codasip’s RISC-V chip development tools and Intel’s FPGA resources via Intel’s Pathfinder for RISC-V.

Neuralink’s brain chip may be ready for trials in humans in six months. The chip, which is designed to help disabled people gain back some vision and muscle control, is now being tested in animals.

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