It must be a measure of the dim view taken of the automotive industry by Silicon Valley types that of the 294 slides in Mary Meeker’s annual Trends presentation delivered at this year’s Code Conference less than 10 of those slides refer to transportation. The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner even managed to avoid… Read More
ISO 26262 First – ASIL-D Ready Vision Processor IP Available
Synopsys made a pretty major announcement regarding their new ASIL-B,C and D ready embedded vision processor IP. This matters because you cannot bolt on the design elements and features needed to achieve these ASIL levels later, and this IP is absolutely necessary for ADAS systems and other critical safety systems in automobiles.… Read More
Dear Toyota
Toyota Motor North America CEO James Lentz got a letter from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week recognizing Toyota’s announced plan to deploy Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) technology on Toyota and Lexus vehicles sold in the U.S. beginning with MY21. The extraordinary letter notes that… Read More
ISO 26262: My IP Supplier Checks the Boxes, So That’s Covered, Right?
Everyone up and down the electronics supply chain is jumping on the ISO 26262 bandwagon and naturally they all want to show that whatever they sell is compliant or ready for compliance. We probably all know the basics here – a product certification from one of the assessment organizations, a designated safety manager and a few other… Read More
Functional Safety is a Driving Topic for ISO 26262
When I was young, functional safety for automobiles consisted of checking tread depth and replacing belts and hoses before long trips. I’ll confess that this was a long time ago. Though even not that long ago, the only way you found out about failing systems was going to the mechanic and having them hook up a reader to the OBD port. Or,… Read More
Semiconductor, EDA Industries Maturing? Wally Disagrees
Wally Rhines (President and CEO of Mentor, A Siemens Business) has been pushing a contrarian view versus the conventional wisdom that the semiconductor business, and by extension EDA, is slowing down. He pitched this at DVCon and more recently at U2U where I got to hear the pitch and talk to him afterwards.
What causes maturing is… Read More
UBER car accident: Verifying more of the same versus the long-tail cases
The recent fatal accident involving an UBER autonomous car, was reportedly not caused – as initially assumed – by a failure of the many sensors on the car to recognize the cyclist. It was instead caused by a failure of the software to take the right decision in regard to that “object”. The system apparently… Read More
Legato Reliability Solution
This week Cadence introduced Legato™ Reliability Solution, intended to address increased challenges in designing high-reliability analog and mixed-signal ICs for automotive, industrial, aerospace and defense applications.… Read More
TSMC Technologies for IoT and Automotive
At TSMC 2018 Silcon Valley Technology Symposium, Dr Kevin Zhang, TSMC VP of Business Development covered technology updates for IoT platform. The three growth drivers in this segment namely TSMC low power, RF enhancement and embedded memory technology (MRAM/RRAM) reinforced both progress and growth in global semiconductor… Read More
Webinar: Thermal and Reliability for ADAS and Autonomy
OK, so maybe the picture here is a little over the top, but thermal and reliability considerations in automotive in general and in ADAS and autonomy in particular, are no joke. Overheating, thermal-induced EM and warping at the board-level, in the package or interposers, are concerns in any environment but especially when you’re… Read More


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