Week In Review: IoT, Automotive, Security

Automotive/Mobility
Synopsys and Porsche Consulting, a management consultancy that grew out of Porsche’s automotive expertise, have collaborated on a framework for accelerating the development of automotive SoCs, using automotive IP. The process includes Synopsys’ Triple Shift-Left — a which uses virtual prototyping and automotive IP to test software and hardware in the design stage — and Porsche Consulting’s systems engineering principles to help OEMs build safety and security into automotive SoCs.

Synopsys has also enhanced its CODE V computer-aided design software used to create image optomechanical systems. Added to the platform are more ways to visualize volume constraints, define complex aperture shapes for blocking and obstructing rays, and create complex prism geometries. With CODE V Version 11.3, Synopsys expanded the library of SpecBuilder, which helps track if optical designs meet specifications. New specs include chief ray and point spread function centroid-based lateral color, element and system weight, and differential expansion of cemented components. CODE V’s unique combination of ray-traceable CAD and visualization CAD surfaces saves time in sequential and non-sequential design work. CODE V can be used for heads-up displays in automotive.

Now in mass production is Calterah Semiconductor’s automotive radar SoC, which was designed using Synopsys DesignWare ARC processor IP.

Baidu is using the Xilinx Automotive (XA) Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC (XAZU5EV) in its automated valet parking platform, says Xilinx in a press release. The XA is used for sensor fusion and AI processing in Baidu’s Apollo Computing Unit (ACU).

PSA Group — which owns automotive OEM brands Peugeot, Citroën, Opel, DS Automobiles, among others — released progress report on its autonomous vehicle driving. The DS 7 CROSSBACK, DS 3 CROSSBACK and PEUGEOT 508 & 508 SW can drive autonomously at Level 2, which is autonomous driving with a human driver supervising. Groupe PSA also participates in the European L3Pilot project, a project that puts 100 cars (and 1,000 drivers) driving autonomously on open roads across ten European countries.

IEEE will be tackling a standard for safety considerations in automated vehicle (AV) decision-making starting in 2020. The new standard, IEEE 2846, will attempt to peel back the black box nature of the automated vehicle (AV) decision-making and help ease the burden on regulators struggling to set rules for the safe use of AVs on public roads. Intel Senior Principal Engineer Jack Weast will lead the workgroup, said Intel in a news bite.

ON Semiconductor will demonstrate long-range and in-vehicle automotive imaging and detection technology at CES 2020, according to a press release. ON Semi’s latest LiDAR will be on display, a high-resolution, wide field-of-view (FoV) single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) array designed for short-, mid- and long-range LiDAR applications.

Startup AiMotive announced it is releasing its aiWare3P core — a neural network hardware accelerator IP for automotive inference, especially high-resolution automotive vision applications. Shipping in January 2020, aiWare3P has logical tile-based data management that scales up to 16 TMAC/s per core or 50+ TMAC/s for multicore, is an efficient hardware NN accelerator architectures and has an upgraded SDK. “We’re not trying to claim the highest TOPS figures,” said AiMotive’s Tony King-Smith, executive advisor, in a phone briefing. “We’re trying to claim the most efficient engine for doing particularly large input size neural network execution.” Although aiDrive is focused on camera use rather than expensive LiDAR, aiWare IP. “We’re seeing next generation LIDAR and radars and other sensors, not just cameras, but much larger inputs. aiWare doesn’t care what the sensor is. It’s just data to it. It is most efficient when you’ve got large data sets. It’s also very good at executing multiple networks at the same time, it’s again very efficient on that so being able to calculate not just one camera the two or four cameras. And if people know there’s no, you can you can load up a number of different networks in the engine. So if you do have a high-resolution LIDAR and you do want to apply neural networks to the input data, that’s fine.” AiMotive makes aiWare IP, aiSIM (simulation tools), and aiDrive (a driving system) for autonomous driving. AiMotive will demo aiWare and other products at CES 2020 in January.

Internet of Things
The startup Codasip has updated its IP generation toolkit Codasip Studio and Codespace 8.2 to add support of compiler security features, C++ Applications (LLVM 8.0.0), and RISC-V External Debug Interface. Codasip, a supplier of RISC-V embedded processor IP, also makes a support package for SweRV and is a founding member of the RISC-V Foundation.

Security
AMD announced that it has joined the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) and forged partnerships with leading technology providers to help promote the development and proliferation of new blockchain-powered gaming platforms.

Automotive industry supplier Webasto is using on eSIM Technology from G+D Mobile Security and Connectivity for smart charging stations for electric vehicles.