I was watching a documentary on the racing life of Paul Newman yesterday and I couldn’t get over the disconnect between Paul Newman’s near-obsession with auto racing and the general public’s understanding of the man. Most of us know Newman for salad dressing and iconic movie roles, but it appears, based on the… Read More
Analysis of Cypress Semiconductor acquisition of Broadcom wireless IoT assets
Cypress Semiconductor announced that it will acquire Broadcom’s wireless Internet of Things (IoT) business in a $550 million deal. The deal was announced on Thursday, April 28, at the same time it announced that T.J. Rodgers will step down as CEO. The deal transfers Broadcom’s Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Zigbee product… Read More
Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)
At NXP, we’re very excited about the prospects for our new i.MX 7 and 8 series of applications processors, which we’re manufacturing on 28nm FD-SOI. As noted in part I of this article series, the new i.MX 7 series, which leverages the 32-bit ARM v7-A core, is targeting the general embedded, e-reader, medical, wearable… Read More
Car Leasing, Car Sharing Don’t Mix
Not to be outdone by General Motors with its investment in Lyft, its acquisition of Cruise and its launch of Maven, BMW is in the process of relaunching and expanding the DriveNow car share service in the U.S. and may soon provide aftermarket hardware to enable Mini lessees to rent their cars, according to a Bloomberg report.
Apple should buy Tesla and appoint Elon Musk as CEO!
Apple’s dismal earnings announcement shows why it badly needs to rethink its innovation model and leadership. Its last breakthrough innovation was the iPhone — which was released in 2007. Since then, Apple has simply been tweaking its componentry, adding faster processors and more advanced sensors, and playing with … Read More
Is Tesla Making Their Own CPUs?
One of the benefits of administering a leading semiconductor design enablement portal is that I get to see the traffic patterns then try and figure out what’s behind them. For example, a Cupertino domain has been reading all of our automotive content very thoroughly. We also get hits by Google.com, Amazon.com, and dozens of other… Read More
Stop the Dashboard Insanity!
Speaking as part of the digital track at this week’s NAB confab, John Ellis proclaimed the demise of the dashboard radio in the coming world of automated vehicles. The headline reporting his talk in Tom Taylor’s newsletter was “Radio is on a path to extinction in the vehicle.”There’s no point in being subtle … Read More
On Driving as Surfing
Driving a car is increasingly like surfing the Web. The day will soon arrive when highway on-ramps are equipped with signs asking you to accept cookies. Those drivers refusing to accept cookies may be diverted. At the very least, they will have an inferior driving experience.… Read More
Get ready for hypergrade in automotive
With use cases expanding, the meaning of “automotive qualified” semiconductors is changing. What we’re now hearing about now is beyond the AEC-Q100 Grade 0 upper end of 150°C, while still meeting other reliability, retention, and security requirements. What does hypergrade mean for complex digital chip… Read More
Is Elon Musk from the Future?
One of the more annoying (ie. delightful) things about Tesla Motors is the way the company casually disrupts long established auto industry business models. Whether it is vehicle sales and service or overcoming EV range anxiety or using your car to as an extension of the power grid or letting your car drive itself.
The latest twist… Read More
Real men have fabs!