Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing

Automotive
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Nvidia to block the company’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm. The FTC said in a press statement that “the proposed vertical deal would give one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips. … the combined firm would have the means and incentive to stifle innovative next-generation technologies, including those used to run datacenters and driver-assistance systems in cars.” The deal was already slowed down, with the U.K. regulatory agency taking more time to examine the deal.

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation will be using NX software and the Teamcenter portfolio from Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio for design and data management.

Zero emission vehicles
The U.S. will miss its electric-vehicle targets if the U.S. does not invest in semiconductor manufacturing, the U.S. commerce secretary warned in a speech.

Pervasive computing, 5G
Silicon Labs integrated Fraunhofer’s mioty LPWAN and IoT technology protocol into Silicon Labs’ IoT chip, the single die, multicore Series 2 sub-GHZ SoC platform, EFR32FG23. The bidirectional chip has low transmit and receive radio power and shows improvement over the previous generation in sensitivity and ability to work deep indoors. “Due to the extremely high sensitivity, up to 80% more range is possible in line-of-sight conditions. Even remote sensors or actuators e.g. in basements or deep indoor applications can now be reached,” explains Günter Rohmer, head of the Fraunhofer IIS research division Positioning and Networks. “The low power consumption of mioty in a SoC solution also enables battery lifetimes of more than 10 years or reliable operation from energy harvesting.” The technology called mioty {miniaturized IoT technology) was developed by Fraunhofer IIS and is codified as an ETSI-standardized (ETSI TS 103 357).

Infineon Technologies added support for AWS IoT ExpressLink to its AIROC IFW56810 Cloud Connectivity Manager (CCM). Companies and end customers use the CCM to connect devices and systems to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The CCM streamlines the process for converting products into IoT devices, securing them with unique IDs, and updating devices over the air.

Siemens Digital Industries Software has also been working with AWS to offer Siemens‘ Xcelerator as a Service portfolio. “Working together, Siemens and AWS will make it easier for industrial customers to use Siemens’ comprehensive digital twin technology and AWS’s cloud services to deliver new manufacturing insights, automation, and connected services,” said Bill Vass, vice president of engineering at AWS in press release.

IAR’s Embedded Workbench for RISC-V, an IDE (integrated development environment) for embedded systems, now supports Codasip’s L30 and L50 processors, which are small, energy-efficient low-power embedded processor cores.

Robotics
ADLINK released its AI on an IoT module, the LEC-RB5 SMARC, which is based on a Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. processor. “This high performing SMARC module is a good option for the next generation of high-compute, low power robots and drones,” said Henri Parmentier, senior product manager, ADLINK. “It empowers customers to do everything they need for complex AI and deep learning workloads at the edge without relying on the cloud.”

Stanford University engineers have designed a perching bird-like robot. The legs can land and clutch the perch.

Security
Infineon showed off its SECORA ID with FIDO this week at the Trustech conference in Paris, France. The system uses online authentication. Security authentication products include SECORA Blockchain, SECORA Connect for IoT, and SECORA Pay.

Richard Moore, the chief of British intelligence agency MI6 said in a speech that intelligence agencies need to work more with the UK’s technology industry.

Companies, people
UMC and Micron agreed to cancel their complaints against each other. UMC will pay Micron an undisclosed amount, according to a press release that appeared on both companies’ websites.

Codasip has named Ron Black as CEO. Founder Karel Masařík will become Codasip’s president and be responsible for advanced research. Codasip supplies customizable RISC-V processor IP.

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