Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Keysight rapid signal scan; Renesas vehicle power control; Siemens live smart factory; auto-detect HW weakness; IP security standards; TI CEO.

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Pervasive computing

Keysight Technologies introduced its new Electrical Performance Scan (EP-Scan), a high-speed digital simulation tool for rapid signal integrity (SI) analysis for hardware engineers and printed circuit board (PCB) designers.

Siemens Digital Industries Software announced the opening of its eXplore Live at The Smart Factory @ Wichita, housed at Wichita State University’s Innovation Campus. The eXplore Live space demonstrates the technology behind Industry 4.0 in “a 3,000 square-foot area dedicated to hands-on learning opportunities for companies looking to modernize, reshore, localize, or regionalize their operations in North America,” according to a press release.  Siemens works with Deloitte and other partners who are participating in the Smart Factory. The Smart Factory has a fully operational production line and labs for smart manufacturing R&D.

Global Unichip Corp. (GUC) created an advanced 3.16GHz HPC core design with 3.5M instances on TSMC’s N3 and a CPU design for TSMC N5 process using Cadence digital solutions. GUC makes advanced chips for AI, HPC, 5G, industrial, and other emerging applications. More details here.

A growing number of cores, accelerators, and infrastructure components being made available for RISC-V, but selecting the right RISC-V core is harder than you think because the tools are not ready yet.

Automotive, mobility

Renesas released a new automotive Intelligent Power Device (IPD) to control power distribution within vehicles and detect abnormal currents, such as overcurrent, even at low loads. The new RAJ2810024H12HPD is available in a small TO-252-7 package, which reduces the mounting area by about 40% compared with the TO-263 package product. In addition, the advanced current detection function of the new device allows highly accurate detection of abnormal currents such as overcurrent.

The oil and gas company Shell USA is acquiring Volta, which operates EV-charging networks. The cost will be approximately $169 million, in an all-cash transaction.

The largest taxi operator in Singapore, ComfortDelGro, is investing in Ottopia, an Israeli startup that makes software for tracking self-driving cars, for $4 million. ComfortDelGro has been investing in self-driving vehicle technology and has completed on several pilot projects.

For heterogeneous designs, the tools are powerful but we do not know enough detail about the properties of materials to use the tools effectively in designs. Here’s what you need to understand about advanced packaging and materials.

General Motors unveiled a hybrid Corvette called the E-Ray with all-wheel drive. The front wheels run on the electric motor and the back on the ICE (internal combustion engine). GM calls this system an intelligent eAWD system, with a 6.2L LT2 small block V-8 ICE and a 1.9 kWh battery pack for the electric motor that recharges only via regenerative charging (no plugging in). The ICE delivers 495 horsepower and 470 lb-ft of torque to the rear axle. The electric motor adds 160 horsepower and 125 lb-ft of torque through the front wheels. Totaled, the 2024 E-Ray, due out later in 2023 for over $100K, has 655 horsepower.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) will use Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio to design composite aerostructures and reduce design cycles. GA-ASI makes unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and radar systems for commercial and U.S. defense industry uses.

EV architectures are evolving for communication and connectivity, but consensus on the best approach remains a moving target with complex tradeoffs.

India’s state of Maharashtra entered an equal-stakes $2.5 billion partnership with two companies, India-based Belrise Industries Ltd, and Taiwan-based Gogoro, to create an EV-battery swapping and smart battery station infrastructure in the state.

Security

Riscure released an automated tool that finds hardware vulnerabilities during design stage of a semiconductor chip. Fitting into the EDA toolchain, the Inspector Pre-Silicon takes the output of RTL design, netlist, or routed netlist simulations, creates traces, and analyzes them to detect leakage. The tool finds the window where the leakage occurs, detect which signals and gates are active in that window, and ranks them based on which are contributing most to the leakage.

Although quantum computing is just getting started, quantum-safe cryptographic methods are needed now, says the think tank IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) in a new report “Security in the quantum computing era.” Data is already ready at risk, according to the report: “Any classically encrypted communication that could be wiretapped is at risk, and potentially already subject to exfiltration, with the intention of harvesting that data once quantum decryption solutions are viable. These tactics are referred to as ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ attacks.”

Accellera has contributed its Security Annotation for Electronic Design Integration (SA-EDI) Standard 1.0 to the IEEE for its development of the IEEE P3164 draft standard. SA-EDI 1.0, which has been out for over a year, was the product of Accellera’s IP Security Assurance (IPSA) Working Group. The standard catalogs where the security issues for integrating IP into IC hardware. It established a lightweight standard for integrating security assurance checks directly into existing workflows. The design-, product-, and tool-independent SA-EDI 1.0 standard helps IP providers identify security concerns for ICs. The standard is design-, product-, and tool-independent. Intel’s Brent Sherman, the IPSA Working Group Chair, will become the Chair of the IEEE P3164 Working Group at the first meeting next month.

People

Texas Instruments CEO Rich Templeton will step down in April, according to Reuters. COO Haviv Ilan will replace Templeton.

Upcoming Events

Check out upcoming events and webinars.

  • Chiplet Summit (San Jose, CA), January 24 – January 26
  • SPIE Photonics West (San Francisco, CA), January 28 – February 2
  • AR/VR/MR: SPIE event (San Francisco, CA), January 30 – February 1
  • DesignCon 2023 (Santa Clara, CA), January 31 – February 2
  • SEMICON KOREA 2023, February 1 – February 3
  • 2023 Signal & Power Integrity (SIPI) SIG, (Santa Clara, CA), February 1 @ 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm PST
  • DVCon U.S. 2023, (San Jose, CA), February 27 – March 2, 2023 

Further Reading:

Read the latest automotive, security, and pervasive computing articles, or check out the latest newsletter.



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