Robots – we have all been waiting for them since we were young. We watched Star Wars, or in the case of the slightly longer-lived of us, we watched Forbidden Planet or Lost in Space. We knew that our future robot friends would be able to move around and interact with their environment. What we did not foresee long ago was that instead of… Read More
‘Que Legal,’ Uber é Legal
Uber went live in Florianopolis on September 30, a week before my wife and I arrived for some down time. But rumors suggested that the service was shuttered almost as soon as it started with a couple of drivers detained and their vehicles impounded. The word was spreading that the service was considered illegal.
As fate would have … Read More
Takata’s Deepest Betrayal
There’s been a lot of betrayal in the automotive industry over the past few years. Consumers have been betrayed by car makers that failed to identify, report or anticipate problems or that deliberately misled their customers. But no betrayal was deeper than that of Takata and the ongoing airbag recall effort. And Takata’s… Read More
Processors, Processors, Processors Everywhere
At first glance a processor conference might seem a bit arcane, however we live in an era where processors are ubiquitous. There is hardly any aspect of our lives that they do not touch in some way. Last week at the Linley Processor Conference the topics included deep learning, autonomous driving, energy, manufacturing, smart cities,… Read More
Intel Altera FPGA at the heart of an autonomous Audi A8
Audi announced its piloted driving technology at CES 2015. The Audi Prologue includes the Advanced Driver Assistance System Platform (zFAS), co-developed with TTTech. The zFAS board is based on four devices: an Nvidia k1 processor and Infineon Aurix processor, Mobileye’s EyeQ3 for vision processing, and an Altera Cyclone … Read More
It’s a heterogeneous world and cache rules it now
Cache evolved when the world was all about homogeneous processing and slow and expensive shared memory. Now, compute is just part of the problem – devices need to handle display, connectivity, storage, and other tasks, all at the same time. Different, heterogeneous cores handle different workflows in the modern SoC, and the burden… Read More
The Privacy Delusion
Why do we think we have privacy in our cars? Why does the government believe there is an interest in preserving privacy in cars? Can we just get over it? One of the least private places known to mankind – outside of the Internet – is the car!
But our transportation regulators in the U.S. and their counterparts at the European Commission… Read More
Getting out of DIY Mode for Virtual Prototypes
Virtual prototyping has, inexplicably, been largely a DIY thing so far. Tools and models have come from different sources with different approaches, and it has been up to the software development team to do the integration step and cobble together a toolchain and methodology that fits with their development effort.
That integration… Read More
The Virus of Car Ownership
What if we all looked at driving as less of a right and more of an addiction, a disability, or a disease to be avoided, cured or overcome? What if driving were seen as a menace to society draining lives, money and time from the economy? What would our public policy priorities become in this new context?
Sweden isn’t waiting to find… Read More
Taxi Industry – Survival by Near Death Experience
The Past We Lived Through
The taxi industry has been a part of city and community landscapes since the “modern” taxicab first appeared on the streets of London in the late 1800’s. Since then, taxis have grown into a massive worldwide industry with strong regulation and protection in most jurisdictions. Such… Read More
Jensen Huang Drops Donald Trump Truth Bomb on Joe Rogan Podcast