Last year, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission sought to resolve the lingering dispute over the use of 75MHs of Wi-Fi spectrum in the 5.9MHz range, previously allocated to the automotive industry for safety applications, by designating 45MHz of that spectrum for unlicensed use while preserving 30MHz for automotive … Read More
Automotive Semiconductor Shortage Over?
Several signs point to an easing of the shortages of semiconductors for automotive applications. However, the production of light vehicles will likely remain below full potential through at least 2023. LMC Automotive’s July forecast of light vehicle production called for 81.7 million units in 2022, up 2% from 2021. LMC’s January… Read More
Auto Makers Face Existential Crisis
Auto makers are burdened and blessed by an eco-system of thousands of suppliers. The industry is also bound by a B2B business model. These realities combine to create unique customer relationships that are challenging and riddled with risk.
The B2B business model is a particularly thorny proposition and extends to the franchised… Read More
Time for NHTSA to Get Serious
In the final season of “The Sopranos,” Christopher Multisanti (played by Michael Imperioli) and Anthony Soprano (James Gandolfini) lose control of their black Cadillac Escalade and go tumbling off a two-lane rural highway and down a hill. Christopher dies (spoiler alert) with an assist from Tony, before Tony calls “911” for… Read More
What is Your Ground Truth?
When my son bought a 2020 Chevrolet Bolt EV a couple of years ago, I was excited. I wanted to see what the Xevo-supplied Marketplace (contextually driven ads and offers) looked like and I was also curious as to what clever navigation integration GM was offering.
I was swiftly disappointed to discover that Xevo Marketplace was not… Read More
What’s Wrong with Robotaxis?
For some reason the obsession with robotaxis persists throughout the world and throughout the transportation industry. The collective conventional wisdom appears to be that getting rid of the human drivers of taxis and letting these vehicles freely operate presumably around the clock will save money and the environment.… Read More
Wireless Carrier Moment of Truth
When Cruise Automation’s cars recently began coming to a stop jamming up San Francisco streets senior wireless and automotive executives worldwide began shifting uneasily in their suites. In spite of demanding that General Motors build them an expensive telematics control unit (TCU) with four-carrier (at the time) connectivity,… Read More
DSPs in Radar Imaging. The Other Compute Platform
In the flood of CPU and GPU announcements in pursuit of new technology advances, it is easy to lose track of another kind of platform – DSPs. Digital signal processors, once a niche platform for specialized applications, are now front and center in some of the hottest technologies. Because their strength in signal processing has… Read More
Accellera Update: CDC, Safety and AMS
I recently had an update from Lu Dai, Chairman of Accellera, also Sr. Director of Engineering at Qualcomm. He’s always a pleasure to talk to, in this instance giving me a capsule summary of status in 3 areas that interested me: CDC, Functional Safety and AMS. I will start with CDC, a new proposed working group in Accellera. To manage… Read More
Scaling Safety Analysis. Reusability for FMEDA
It is common when a new type of analysis is introduced in almost any domain that it works well enough for a while. Until it begins to struggle with growing problem size, prompting refinements to the methodology to allow continued scaling. We see this routinely in analytics for SoC design, so it should not be a big surprise that safety… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet