One of my pet beefs with the car industry is that car makers, on the whole, have failed to agree among themselves as to what basic vehicle connectivity ought to consist of. From car maker to car maker prices vary, bundles vary, free periods of service access vary and the variations get worse between model years as offers change and … Read More
Tesla: Canary in the Coal Mine
The automotive industry is tied up in knots over cybersecurity. Consumers expect their cars to be secure. Car makers spend millions on securing cars, but don’t know how, what, or if to charge consumers for security.
Meanwhile, most cyber penetration reports to organizations such as the Auto-ISAC are related to enterprise attacks. … Read More
ISO 26262: Feeling Safe in Your Self-Driving Car
The word “safety” can mean a lot of different things to different people, but it’s a word we hear frequently when the topic involves automobiles. In contrast, “functional safety” has a long-established meaning in the design of electrical and mechanical systems: an automatic protection mechanism with a predictable response … Read More
Chip Shortage Killed the Radio in the Car
“In my mind and in my car, we can’t rewind we’ve gone too far.” – “Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles
I discovered within days of driving home my new BMW X3 last fall that I was a victim of the much ballyhooed chip shortage. Among the features “deleted” from … Read More
Synopsys Tutorial on Dependable System Design
Synopsys hosted a tutorial on the last day of DVCon USA 2022 on design/system dependability. Which here they interpret as security, functional safety, and reliability analysis. The tutorial included talks from DARPA, AMD, Arm Research and Synopsys. DARPA and AMD talked about general directions and needs, Arm talked about their… Read More
A Blanche DuBois Approach Won’t Resolve Traffic Trouble
Near the end of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” the Blanche DuBois character, who has suffered a mental breakdown following an implied rape, tells the doctor and matron who have come to take her to the hospital: “Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Sadly, this is the… Read More
Auto Safety – A Dickensian Tale
As I prepare to join the International Telecommunications Union’s Future Networked Car Symposium – today through Friday – I am reminded of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” and its unforgettable opening paragraph – modified for a modern context here:
It was the best of times,… Read More
No Traffic at the Crossroads
The Federal Highway Administration in the U.S. tells us that “each year roughly one–quarter of all traffic fatalities and about one–half of all traffic injuries in the United States are attributed to intersections.” Intersections are clearly a challenge for human drivers, and the dirty little automotive industry secret is… Read More
Use Existing High Speed Interfaces for Silicon Test
The growth of complexity for silicon test as it relates to test data volume and test times is driven by multiple concurrent factors. One dimension is simply the increase in silicon complexity. However, other factors are playing a role as well. These include higher reliability requirements for new applications such as automotive,… Read More
GM’s Super Duper Cruise
It’s one thing to lead an industry. It’s another to anticipate and meet a new challenge well ahead of competitors in an industry. It’s another thing, still, to solve a long-standing problem and receive barely a hint of credit.
Such is the case with General Motors’ semi-autonomous hands-free Super Cruise feature. While many


The AI PC: A New Category Poised to Reignite the PC Market