Top automakers’ EV charging network; Intel’s 5G SoCs for Ericsson; Micron’s 24GB HBM3; EV battery facilities; SEC cybersecurity rules; Samsung and Microsoft’s hardware attestation solution; IBM’s trustworthy AI toolkit updates; a novel approach to neuromorphic computing.
BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis will create an electric vehicle charging network, installing more than 30,000 high-powered DC charge points accessible to any cars that use Combined Charging System (CCS) or North American Charging Standard (NACS) connectors. Opening summer 2024, the network will leverage Plug & Charge technology and allow easy digital integration with in-vehicle and in-app experiences. The stations will use renewable energy and offer various driver amenities such as restrooms, food service, and retail operations.
Intel will use its 18A process to manufacture custom 5G SoCs for Ericsson for its next-generation optimized 5G infrastructure. The companies also will optimize 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors with vRAN Boost for Ericsson’s Cloud RAN (radio access network) to help communications providers increase capacity and efficiency with more flexibility and scalability.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose cybersecurity incidents within four days and to annually disclose details “regarding their cybersecurity risk management, strategy, and governance.”
Micron began sampling an 8-high 24GB HBM3 Gen2 memory with bandwidth greater than 1.2TB/s and pin speed over 9.2Gb/s, claiming new records for artificial intelligence (AI) data center metrics. Gen2 could reduce training times of large language models (LLMs) by up to 50% compared to current HBM3 solutions.
Quick links to more news: Vehicles and Batteries, Security, Pervasive Computing, Research and Events.
The EU adopted a law requiring fast recharging stations of at least 150kW for cars and vans to be installed every 60 km (37 miles) along the EU’s main transport corridors from 2025 onward.
Stellantis and Samsung will build a second StarPlus Energy Gigafactory battery manufacturing facility in the U.S. with an initial annual production capacity of 34 gigawatt hours (GWh), starting in early 2027. The companies’ first facility under their StarPlus joint venture is set to launch in Q1 2025 in Kokomo, Indiana.
Enevate and Korea’s JR Energy Solution (JR ES) plan to build a battery cell electrode manufacturing facility in the United States, producing tailor-made lithium-ion battery cell electrodes, including anodes and cathodes, plus various electrode solutions including graphite, silicon, LFP, NMC, NCMA, and NCA, for different battery cell form factors such as pouch or cylindrical cells.
General Motors (GM) announced a new 400,000 square-foot facility at Canada’s CAMI Assembly will build battery modules for BrightDrop Zevo electric delivery vans, starting Q2 2024, to help meet electric vehicle (EV) production targets. Other GM plants will build more Ultium EVs.
After decades of R&D, General Motors is ready to deploy its hydrogen fuel-cell technology aimed at large vehicles and heavy payloads, according to SAE. The second-generation design uses just 20 grams of platinum compared to Gen 0’s 80 grams.
Automakers are exploring more ways to recycle electric vehicle batteries, owing to a clause in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that says materials from batteries “recycled in North America” can qualify for subsidies even if the battery was originally made overseas, according to Reuters.
Volkswagen (VW) invested about US$700 million in Chinese electric car maker XPENG to develop two VW electric models for the midsize segment in China using VW’s modular electric-drive toolkit (MEB). In addition, its Audi division expanded an existing agreement with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. (SAIC) to make more connected electric vehicles in the premium segment.
Nissan committed to invest up to €600 million in Ampere, Renault Group’s new European EV and software entity, to boost Nissan’s electrification strategy, goals, and initiatives in Europe and other potential markets.
Mitsubishi’s all-electric FUSO eCanter light-duty trucks will be powered by Ample’s Modular Battery Swapping technology, with an initial range of 62 to 200 miles. The move is aimed at the last mile of delivery, “accounting for 25 to 30% of emissions in towns and cities globally.”
In Germany, Porsche opened its first charging lounge, featuring six 300-kW DC fast-charging stations, four 22-kW AC charging points, and a premium experience with bathrooms, drinks, and snacks. The company is planning a fast-charging network along key European routes, including more lounges.
Fig. 1: The first Porsche Charging Lounge. Source: Porsche
An algorithm can be trained to help schedule and manage the charging of a diverse set of electric vehicles using reinforcement learning, involving a particular combination of computational rewards and punishments, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and graduate students at the University of Chicago.
Father/son Yale University alumni created a human/AI-designed, 3D-printed car that is “a complete software-hardware solution designed to replace traditional vehicle manufacturing.” Featuring 1,350 combined horsepower, the Czinger 21C can go from 0 to 60 mph in 1.88 seconds with a top speed of 253 mph.
The U.S. Departments of Commerce (DoC) and Defense (DoD) expanded their collaboration to ensure their investments “position the U.S. to produce semiconductor chips essential to national security and defense programs.”
Samsung and Microsoft announced an industry-first on-device, mobile hardware-backed device attestation solution that works on both company and personally owned devices, regardless of ownership. Enterprises can verify a device’s integrity and allow access to the corporate system, whether it’s managed or unmanaged, while employees can bring their personal devices to work and safely access the corporate system without extra security steps.
IBM Security released its annual Cost of a Data Breach Report, saying 95% of studied organizations experienced more than one breach. It noted that organizations were more likely to pass incident costs onto consumers (57%) than to increase security investments (51%). Globally, the average cost of a data breach reached $4.45 million in 2023, up 15% increase over the last three years.
Fig. 2: Average cost of a data breach. Source: IBM
CISA released an analysis of the 121 Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (RVAs) in the 2022 financial year, detailing a sample attack a bad actor could follow to compromise an organization plus an infographic highlighting the most successful techniques, both mapping threat actor behavior to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. In addition, the agency issued multiple alerts and advisories, added vulnerabilities, and detailed Apple security updates. CISA is also establishing dedicated election security advisor positions around the country.
An issue in AMD Zen 2 architecture-based processors “under specific micro-architectural circumstances” may allow an attacker to access sensitive information such as encryption keys and passwords. The vulnerability is currently under analysis.
Thales acquired Imperva for $3.6 billion to boost the company’s growth in data security and gain entry into the application security market.
Some network-on-chip (NoC) fabrics are vulnerable to rogue foundries reverse-engineering NoC topology and routing logic. Researchers at University of Florida developed “a novel obfuscation technology to conceal the topology of NoC interconnects in SoC designs.”
Quantum light could be used to create “unforgeable” codes to protect digital payments from cyber thieves, according to researchers from the University of Vienna.
Infineon released a new portfolio of 28 nm security controllers, integrating the Integrity Guard 32 security architecture and an advanced Arm v8-M instruction set for enhanced device performance, supporting a wide range of applications.
DARPA is collaborating with NASA on a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) engine and Lockheed Martin agreed to start work on fabricating and designing the experimental NTR vehicle (X-NTRV) and its engine.
IBM is adapting its Trustworthy AI Toolkit for the foundation model era and developing tools to make AI more transparent and trustworthy by detecting artificial intelligence (AI)-generated text and uncovering the origins of generative models and their text.
Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI met at the White House and voluntarily committed “to help move toward safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology.”
The semiconductor industry is set for a new growth cycle fueled by AI, quantum computing, 5G, and specialized applications, according to Yole’s Overview of the Semiconductor Devices Industry 2023.
The shift toward chip design on cloud is accelerating. Business models are getting worked out, and workloads are better understood, as evidenced by some key partnerships between the semiconductor ecosystem’s biggest players. But users still want better flexibility in licensing.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) announced awards of up to $400,000 for industry partners that help achieve clean energy goals using national laboratories’ high performance computing (HPC) resources and expertise. Goals include “improvements of advanced materials crucial to more energy efficient semiconductor devices and systems; and process improvements in semiconductor manufacturing.”
Rivian, BrightNight, and The Nature Conservancy are building a solar energy center on a former coal mine in Kentucky. It will have an 800-megawatt (MW) capacity, producing enough electricity to power over 170,000 households per year, plus a 20-mile transmission line, enabling an extra 1 gigawatt (GW) of renewable power generation to be built in the future.
Infineon released new tools:
University of Surrey and University of Cambridge researchers investigated how to release high-speed photonic sources using metal-halide perovskites and studied how the material could be used with LEDs in various applications, including Light-fidelity (Li-Fi), underwater communications, moderate- to high-speed photonic connections, and Internet of things (IoT) devices.
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) researchers found a way to integrate a novel approach to neuromorphic computing into conventional chip manufacturing. They pressed the entire spin wave process into a magnetic disk a few micrometers thick and made it vibrate.
Georgia Tech and Hanoi University researchers used a University of San Diego supercomputer and machine-learning models to build a database that could identify new superconducting materials that work at room temperature, and identified two possible candidates.
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