Week In Review: IoT, Security, Autos

AI/Edge
Vastai Technologies is using Arteris IP’s FlexNoC Interconnect IP and AI Package for its Artificial Intelligence Chips for artificial intelligence and computer vision systems-on-chip (SoCs). Startup Vastai Technologies was founded in December 2018, designs ASICs and software platforms for computer vision and AI applications, such as smart city, smart surveillance, smart education, according to a press release.

Smart city connections will be dominated by video surveillance and smart utility metering, says ABI Research in a report, predicting that by 2026, 87% of the smart city market will be those two device types. Low-latency 5G connections and embedded AI in video surveillance systems are some of the enabling technologies.

Internet of Things
The smart building market will generate over $2 billion in revenue by 2026 for software and services, says ABI Research, thanks to some new emerging applications. ABI cited environmental monitoring and space, asset and cleanliness management as helping the market grow 32% CAGR over the next 8 years. Environmental monitoring will use sensors to monitor noise levels, air quality and lighting to adjust indoor conditions to make buildings more liveable. Asset management can help hospitals with inventory with RFID tags, and cleanliness management can help keep the towel and soap dispensers filled with a warning from a sensor.

Synopsys released a development kit to help designers develop software for an SoC before the SoC is available. The ARC HS4x/4xD Development Kit is intended for applications are mobile baseband, voice/speech, home audio, and artificial intelligence. Included is a 28-nm multicore ARC HS4x/HS4xD-based chip running at 1 GHz, 4GB of DDR memory and components and interfaces needed for connectivity. All the software is available on embARC website and the kit is compatible with Linux, Yocto, and Buildroot systems. The embARC Open Software Platform (OSP) provides drivers, FreeRTOS and middleware for embedded and IoT application development.

The global IoT chip market will grow over $38.61 billion by 2029, predicts a market report from BIS Research. Artificial intelligence added to the consumer and industrial IoT is pushing the market forward. The report also says lower sensors costs is helping boost the market of IoT chipsets.

Taiwan-based eMemory’s NeoFuse IP was qualified on foundry UMC’s 28nm high voltage (HV) process. The logic-based non-volatile memory (logic NVM) technology from eMemory will be used in OLEDs.

Security
Synopsys’ Software Integrity Group is working with fintech company Finastra to secure financial services delivered over an app called FusionFabric.cloud. Synopsys is providing static application security testing, software composition analysis, penetration testing, and code reviews.

Security chips from the German technology group G+D Mobile Security are protecting Miele’s connected professional appliances. The chips handle the authentication between Miele’s devices and online service, using TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption to secure transmissions. The data travels via routers on a WLAN and LAN among devices (say your washing machine needs to talk to the dishwasher). Since a mobile network is not being used, the connections work wherever the appliance is in the building, according to a press release. Customers still use a smartphone app to control the machines or via an existing smart system.

Automotive/Mobility
Self-driving car startup Cruise introduced an all-electric self-driven people mover called Origin, which is built on a General Motors platform. According to a blog, “It’s got what’s called redundancy, meaning there are no single points of failure across sensing, compute, networking, or power — because there’s no backup human driver.” Cruise was founding in San Francisco in October 2013 by Kyle Vogt, who had participated in 2004 DARPA challenge. General Motors (GM) acquired Cruise in February 2016 and became a subsidiary of GM with investments from SoftBank, Honda, and T. Rowe Price. Cruise says on its website that it has 150 autonomous vehicles driving on San Francisco streets. “At this very moment, we’re running fleets of our third-generation vehicles on the roads of San Francisco, operating a rideshare service that any Cruise employee can use, 24/7,” writes Cruise CEO Dan Ammann on Medium. “Last year alone, we accumulated nearly a million miles as we autonomously drove nearly every road in San Francisco.” Ammann says the car will be driving constantly, will have a lifespan over 1 million miles and be built at the cost of today’s conventional electric SUVs.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has launched the second phase of an effort to collect and analyze data obtained from advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) such as adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist. Called PARTS II (Partnership for Analytics Research in Traffic Safety, II), the program, a partnership between USDOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the automobile industry, will collect voluntarily-supplied data from almost 70% of the U.S. automobile market, according to a USDOT’s press release. The data will help researchers study the safety effectiveness of these safety systems. The first PARTS program determined that vehicles with automatic emergency braking systems had 53% fewer rear-end collisions than vehicles without. Six manufacturers participated in the first study.

A C-V2X (cellular vehicle-to-everything) system is being deployed on select roadways of the U.S. state of Virginia. The communications system will broadcast traffic warnings in intersections. Audi of America, the Virginia’s Department of Transportation (VDOT) and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., are working together on an initial deployment in northern Virginia using the 5.9 GHz band. Qualcomm’s 9150 C-V2X chipset solution will be used an in-vehicle display in Audi Q8 SUVs to deliver a graduated warning. Audi already has V2X traffic light information set up in 25 cities and 10,000 intersections nationwide including over 1,700 intersections in the Washington D.C. metropolitan region, according to a press release.

Test equipment company Keysight Technologies, Inc. is working with Silicon Labs to speed up timing validation on Silicon Labs’ chips bound for system-level designs for wireless communications, high-speed digital, medical imaging and automotive applications. The companies are using Keysight’s Infiniium UXR-Series oscilloscope and its phase noise analysis software with Silicon Labs’ high-performance products. Silicon Labs’ primary silicon products are mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), oscillators, clock generators, clock buffers and IEEE 1588 modules. Timing is important in moving data via wireless and wired networks.

Patents
Xilinx filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware against Analog Devices for infringing on eight of Xilinx’s patents. The patents involve serializers/deserializers (SerDes), high-speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs), as well as mixed-signal devices for 5G. According to a press release, Xilinx is seeking damages and asking Analog Devices to stop selling and importing into the United States, products that infringe Xilinx’s asserted patents. The lawsuit is part of a countersuit. Analog Devices filed suit against Xilinx in December 2019 for unauthorized use of ADI’s patented ADC technology in Xilinx’s Zynq UltraScale + RFSoC products.

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