Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Huge Tesla self-driving car recall; military AI agreement; MIPI security framework; Infineon fab; U.S. EV credits make. S. Korean EV makers anxious.

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Tesla will recall 362,000 U.S. vehicles over Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta software after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that the cars sometimes have unsafe behavior around intersections when using the FSD Beta system. Examples are “traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution. In addition, the system may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver’s adjustment of the vehicle’s speed to exceed posted speed limits,” according to the NHTSA complaint. The remedy will be an over-the-air (OTA) software update, free of charge, from Tesla. The recall number is SB-23-00-001.

The U.S. and China were among more than 60 countries that agreed to endorse responsible use of a AI for military at the first international summit on military AI use, held in The Hague. Called the Summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain, REAIM 2023, the agreement is not binding.

Pervasive computing

Cadence has 13 new Verification IP (VIP) solutions, some of which will help engineers develop and verify next-generation automotive, hyperscale data center and mobile SoCs and microcontrollers. The VIPs have latest industry standards, including Arm AMBA 5 CHI-f, UCIe, GDDR7, DDR5 DIMM, MIPI A-PHY and SoundWire I3S, and USB4 2.0 interfaces.

On the 75th anniversary of the transistor, a panel of industry experts tackles what transistors and chips will look like in the next 75 years, including the potential of 2D materials, 1,000-layer NAND, and new ways of recruiting talent.

Automotive, mobility

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has caused some angst among the South Korean EV automakers, who are uncertain if their EVs will be eligible for the IRA tax credit for EVs made in the U.S. Although Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors, the largest South Korean carmakers, are planning to build cars in the U.S., if the car batteries don’t have some amount of U.S. produced materials in them, the cars may not be eligible for the $7,500 consumer tax credit, which would make it hard for their EVs to compete with U.S. EVs.

Indie Semiconductor, a U.S.-based fabless automotive semiconductor company, has a definitive agreement to acquire GEO Semiconductor, another U.S.-based fabless semiconductor company specializing in video processors for automotive cameras. Indie makes edge sensors for radar, LiDAR, ultrasound, and computer vision for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), user experience, and electrification applications. Its mixed-signal SoCs are used for in-cabin experience applications. Customers are Tier 1s and automotive OEMs and its 2022 review was $110.8M, up 129% year-over-year.

Dissipating heat in advanced chips is getting more complex. In heterogeneous packages not every component can withstand the same amount of heat, and that becomes even more complicated as dimensions shrink. Heterogeneous integration and increasing density at advanced nodes are creating some complex and difficult challenges for IC manufacturing and packaging that engineers should know about.

Infineon got the green light to build a Dresden fab for analog/mixed-signal technologies and power semiconductors, although some of the European funding is yet to be finalized. The analog/mixed-signal components will be used in power supply systems, such as in energy-efficient charging systems, small automotive motor control units, data centers and IoT applications. Infineon says the interaction of power semiconductors and analog/mixed-signal components makes it possible to create particularly energy-efficient and intelligent system solutions.

Security

With mission-critical automotive applications — ADAS, ADS —as the first use case, the MIPI Security Framework moves forward in the standards process. At the recent MIPI symposium meeting of MIPI CSI-2 Security Forum, chairs of the MIPI Security Working Group went over the proposed security framework, which includes the four security-related specifications that are currently being finalized. The framework is initially targeting ADAS and autonomous driving systems because they require end-to-end protection of data streams between MIPI CSI-2-based sensors and their related ECUs.Highlights from the forum are here plus a recording from the event is here.

NIST has chosen contest for standardization of a lightweight crypto (LWC) algorithm has just finished. US standards body NIST selected Ascon as the winner. Ascon is an algorithm proposed by an international team of scientists that delivers strong performance and security at a low cost. How does that work?

Samsung Electronics announced it has developed a pre-emptive Message Guard for its mobile phones to catch zero click exploits, which can happen any time an image is received on a phone. Whenever an image is sent by text, the Message Guard sandboxes the image and scans it bit by bit, before the code in the image can do any damage or access files.

Riscure says it is releasing an update to its True Code in March that will have a new way to define and execute dynamic tests like fuzzing and FI simulation in the form of security benchmarks. “We will introduce a new way to efficiently manage the hardware dependencies that are present in your code and can stand in your way to execute these dynamic tests efficiently,” according to a blog on Riscure’s web site.

Upcoming Events

  • 2023 International Solid-State Circuits Conference — ISSCC 2023, (San Francisco, CA), February 19 – 23
  • Phil Kaufman Award & Banquet, (San Jose, CA), February 23
  • HPCA 2023: IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (Montreal, QC, Canada), February 25 – March 1
  • SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning (San Jose, CA), February 26 – March 2
  • DVCon U.S. 2023, (San Jose, CA), February 27 – March 2, 2023
  • Conference on Industrial Computed Tomography iCT 23 (Fürth, Germany), February 27 – March 2, 2023
  • SPIE: Advances in Patterning Materials and Processes XL (San Jose, CA), February 27 – March 1 

See more events on our events page.

Further Reading:

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



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