Stellantis-Foxconn JV; NatSec Cyber unit; Hyundai fault; skyTran and Siemens’ maglev system; EV tax breaks in China; new GDDR6 interface; Microsoft’s Azure Quantum Elements System.
Stellantis and Foxconn formed a 50/50 joint venture called SiliconAuto, to be headquartered in the Netherlands. The goal is to close the gap between supply and demand for chips used in computer-controlled features and modules, especially for electric vehicles (EVs).
The U.S. Department of Justice created a National Security Cyber Section within its National Security Division to increase the “capacity to disrupt and respond to malicious cyber activity” and promote partnerships to tackle “increasingly sophisticated and aggressive cyber threats by hostile nation-state adversaries.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a task force for AI. Its goals include working with partners in government, industry, and academia to assess the impact of AI on the country’s ability to secure critical infrastructure.
The U.S. Department of Transportation opened an evaluation into the 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 after receiving 30 consumer complaints claiming a reduced or total loss of power. Many consumers reported a loud pop and warning message, with varying amounts of time between those signals and the power loss.
Delta agreed to purchase HY&T Investments and its subsidiaries, including the Germany-based TB&C Group, for €142 million (~US $155 million). TB&C Group “develops hybrid technologies for mechanical components applied in automotive, industrial, and medical applications” and the purchase is expected to boost Delta’s electric vehicle (EV) battery management system (BMS).
Continental released its Smart Cockpit high-performance computer (HPC), enabling the integration of various domains and functions, such as the instrument cluster and infotainment, into one box. The HPC features an interface to an Android Operating System, including display, radio, phone, phone-mirroring, and navigation, plus advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS).
Fig. 1: Continental’s Smart Cockpit HPC. Source: Continental
SkyTran is using Siemens’ Simcenter MAGNET software from the company’s Xcelerator portfolio to create a new maglev transport system for personal urban rapid transit. The software helped skyTran reduce physical prototyping costs by 90%, according to a release.
IAR will support the latest CYT6BJ series from Infineon’s TRAVEO T2G Body MCU family. It features 16MB of embedded flash memory with a quad-core Arm Cortex-M7, and fulfills the requirements of the ISO 26262 standard up to ASIL B. IAR said it’s ideal for complex automotive body electronics applications and covers mid to low-end zone controllers for new E/E architectures.
WISeKey and SEALSQ implemented a solution for secure and seamless EV charging involving a “VAULTIC secure element, provisioned with a trusted identity.” The security is managed through INeS Managed PKI as-a-Service, allowing secure authentication and encrypted data exchange between an EV, station, network, and service providers.
China announced a fresh round of EV tax breaks worth an estimated U.S. $72.3 billion over four years. The tax credit scheme began in 2014 and aims to increase demand for EVs inside of China. EV buyers will receive up to US $4,000 off the purchase price through 2027 and then the credit will be halved.
Rivian drivers will be able to access Tesla’s Supercharger Network in 2024, bringing Tesla closer to becoming the industry standard for EV charging. Ford and General Motors had previously joined the network.
The automotive industry is in the midst of rapid change on many fronts. OEMs are exploring new functions and features to add to their vehicles, including chiplets, electrification, and autonomous features, as well as new vehicle architectures. But all of this is dependent on the relationships between all of the ecosystem players involved.
Microsoft announced that a threat actor, tracked as Storm-1359, caused a recent outage affecting many Azure users. The company said the “attacks likely rely on access to multiple virtual private servers (VPS) in conjunction with rented cloud infrastructure, open proxies, and DDoS tools.” Distributed denial of service attacks involves flooding a network with bad traffic so it cannot function normally.
Progress Software provided updates on actions needed to prevent further breaches of its MOVEit file transfer software following a widespread attack last week claimed by the CL0P Ransomware Gang.
Rewards for Justice offered a bounty of up $10 million for information about the CL0P Ransomware Gang or any other malicious cyber actors targeting U.S. critical infrastructure to a foreign government.
Asus advised users of certain Wi-Fi router models to install the latest security update to their firmware, or else disable services accessible from the WAN side to avoid potential attacks.
CISA issued several alerts and advisories. One provides details about “current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.” The others include vulnerabilities involving the Enphase Installer Toolkit 3.27.0. and the energy monitoring device Enphase Envoy D7.0.88.
Some 85% of American companies said they currently use, or plan to use, AI in their cybersecurity functions, according to a new survey from Equinix. In addition, 87% of respondents said improving cybersecurity was among their top priorities for keeping up with current and future business needs, and 74% said cyberattacks were a top threat.
Cisco launched two new routers based on its Silicon One architecture, which will target “enhanced Ethernet-based artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and web-scale spine deployments.” The devices are based on 5nm process technology, with speeds of between 25.6 and 51.2 Tbps, depending on the model.
Infineon’s XENSIV PAS CO2 sensor met the requirements for two internationally recognized green building certifications. The sensor is based on photo-acoustic spectroscopy (PAS) technology and integrates a PAS transducer (MEMS acoustic detector, infrared source, and optical filter), a microcontroller for signal processing and algorithms, and a MOSFET chip to drive the infrared source.
Fig. 2: Infineon’s new CO2 sensor. Source: Infineon
Infineon also launched its Edge Protect embedded security solution with a range of categories and configurations to help consumer and industrial IoT OEMs “better protect their brand, reduce liability risk, protect their IP, and bring their products to market faster.”
Rambus released a new GDDR6 memory interface, delivering a data rate of up to 24 Gigabits per second (Gb/s), providing 96 Gigabytes per second (GB/s) of bandwidth per GDDR6 memory device. The target is high-bandwidth memory performance for AI/ML, graphics and networking applications.
Maeve Aerospace adopted Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio of software and services to help develop Maeve 01, a next-generation, zero emissions, all-electric passenger aircraft, with a 44 passenger capacity and a 250 nautical mile range.
DB GlobalChip deployed Cadence’s Spectre FX Simulator, integrated with Spectre AMS Designer.
AI accelerator chips mainly using high-bandwidth memory (HBM) are predicted to have a total HBM capacity of 290 million GB in 2023, a growth rate of almost 60%, according to TrendForce. The prediction applies to chips, including NVIDIA’s H100 and A100, AMD’s MI200 and MI300, and Google’s TPU. Growth is projected to continue at a rate of at least 30% into 2024.
Microsoft introduced its new Azure Quantum Elements system, and said it can speed up certain chemistry simulations by 500,000 times.” That shrinks the equivalent of a year of research down to one minute.
HPE is using AMD’s EPYC Embedded Series processors to power its new modular, multi-protocol storage solution, HPE Alletra Storage MP.
Vitesco Technologies and the French Alternative and Atomic Energies Agency (CEA) announced the final results of a three-year R&D project targeted at a switched battery (SWIBA). Benefits include a 6% range improvement, a 20% reduction in charging time, and 15% longer battery life.
A member of Stanford’s Starling Lab for Data Integrity explained how researchers are using cryptography and blockchain technologies to verify the veracity of images and videos to help restore trust in digital media.
Researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported “an electrocatalysis-enabled system for smart and precisely concentration-controlled nitrogen nutrient recycling via electrifying nitrate-rich wastewaters.” The smart farming platform aims to improve crop yields and minimize pollution.
The Theta supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory helped researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) find the essential factors that control a structural change of a key viral protein in HIV called protease.
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