Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Security
Many IoT devices have some of the 19 bugs known as Ripple20 vulnerabilities. Researchers JSOF discovered the security flaws in library produces by Treck, Inc., which is used in many IoT devices.

Edge, cloud, data center
Rambus delivered its 112G XSR/USR PHY IP on TSMC 7nm process (N7). The SerDes PHY was designed for chiplets and co-packaged optics (CPO) architectures that are destined for data center, networking, 5G, HPC and AI/ML applications. In silicon, the IP has exceeded the reach/BER performance of the CEI-112G XSR specification, said Rambus in a press release. The IP also supports NRZ and PAM-4 signaling.

A tool-fab-cloud collaboration is shortening semiconductor design time, according to Cadence, which says its signoff tools for TSMC technology used on Microsoft’s Azure cloud are helping to reduce signoff time. The three companies studied their mutual clients who used Cadence CloudBurst Platform on Azure to create advanced node designs. Synopsys reported similar success for TSMC using Azure. TSMC’s white paper describes the successes.

Intel introduced its 3^rd generation Xeon Scalable processor for data centers and AI acceleration, an AI platform, an AI-optimized FPGA, new Optane persistent memory, and 3D NAND solid state drives. The Xeon uses Intel’s DL Boost with bfloat16 to speed up AI training and inferencing.

Xilinx uncorked two real-time video computing appliances based on its Real-Time (RT) Server architecture. Designed for edge and on-prem compute-intensive workloads, the video servers handle high-quality, low-cost live video streaming using Alveo U30 and U50 data center acceleration cards. Meanwhile, HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) is adopting the Alveo U50 and Alveo U250 accelerator cards on the HPE ProLiant servers.

5G
Semiconductor startup Picocom is adding UltraSoC’s in-field monitoring and analytics IP to its upcoming baseband 5G New Radio small cell SoC. When installed in buildings, the SoCs will increase 5G access while lowering processing loads on 5G macrocells. The IP will make it possible for Picocom and their customers to monitor, analyze and fine-tune the performance of their systems throughout the whole product lifecycle.

Automotive/Mobility
Arm has updated its Arm Mali Driver Development Kit (DDK) so different in-vehicle graphics systems in automotive cockpits can share electronic control units (ECUs). Using virtualization, separate virtual machines can access the same graphics processing unit (GPU) but not have access, for security, to the other virtual machines using the GPU. A cockpit domain controller on the SoC will manage the traffic demands on the GPU from the virtual machines.

Software controlled GPU virtualization. The GPU arbiter acts as a gatekeeper, ensuring each Virtual Machine gets direct and isolated access to GPU resources. Source: Arm.

Ambarella’s AI vision processors, the upcoming CV22FS and CV2FS automotive camera SoCs, have met automotive safety goals thanks to Tessent software Safety ecosystem, an automotive IC test tool from Mentor, a Siemens business. Ambarella adopted Tessent LogicBIST, MemoryBist and Tessent MissionMode on the SoCs to cover the in-system testing required by ISO 26262.

Tesla is considering Austin, Texas for its Cybertruck factory, the second Tesla electric vehicle factory in the United States, reports Bloomberg News.

Robots, drones, machine learning and 5G
Qualcomm announced its new robotics offering, the RB5 Platform, for creating robots and drones that can run AI inferencing on edge in 4G or 5G. RB5 has hardware, software and development tools, including Qualcomm QRB5165 processor with AI Engine and Hexagon Tensor Accelerator, an image signal processor that supports seven concurrent cameras, along with a dedicated computer vision engine for enhanced video analytics.

Space
Something was shaking at the Xenon Collaboration in Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy recently, enough to write a paper about. The internationally sponsored experiment is looking signs of dark matter particles. A pinging recorded in the underground xenon-filled experiment is making a larger number of pings than expected, which could be indicate a new particle type is disturbing the xenon. Scientist are guessing now at what the particle could be, but axions from the Sun is a contender.

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