Alphabet is showing signs of taking over just about every infotainment function in cars except one: traffic information. When Alphabet, aka Google, arrived on the automotive scene the company and its minions quickly grasped that there was going to be a big opportunity for search, voice, navigation, maps, traffic and contextual… Read More
Foundation IP for Automotive: so Stringent Quality Requirements!
The Automotive IC market is not the largest segment, but is certainly the segments expected to grow with the highest CAGR, with 10.8% from 2013 to 2018, according with IC Insights (January 2015). If you consider the pretty long concept/design to production cycle time (7 years or more) as well as the numerous segments just emerging… Read More
Optimization and verification wins in IoT designs
Designers tend to put tons of energy into pre-silicon verification of SoCs, with millions of dollars on the line if a piece of silicon fails due to a design flaw. Are programmable logic designers, particularly those working with an SoC such as the Xilinx Zynq, flirting with danger by not putting enough effort into verification?… Read More
Dealerless Future for Driverless Cars
The Chevrolet Volt was a technological marvel from its very launch. A so-called plug-in extended range electric vehicle that could be operated entirely on battery power as long as it was only driven short distances or for hundreds of miles on gasoline. But something happened on the way to the market that suggests deeper troubles… Read More
I already live in the future and so should you
I live in the future. I drive a Tesla electric vehicle, which controls the steering wheel on highways. My house in Menlo Park, Calif., is a “passive” home that expends minimal energy on heating or cooling. With the solar panels on my roof, my energy bills are close to zero — and that includes charging the car. My iPhone is encased in a … Read More
Apple, Alphabet, AT&T – We Have a Problem
Poor Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Emmy award-winning chief medical correspondent for CNN, a neurosurgeon and professor and now an explainer of distracted driving as part of CNN’s weeklong report on Driving While Distracted which concluded last Saturday. He offers a detailed medical explanation of driver distraction as only a neurosurgeon… Read More
MIPI DevCon 2016: Opened to non-MIPI Members!
The MIPI Alliance was founded in 2003 by large IDM to standardize chip-to-chip interfaces in the wireless phone (mobile) segment. The various MIPI specifications (CSI, DSI, DigRF and many more) have been adopted by the application processor chip makers (usually large IDM or fabless, like Intel or Qualcomm initially and many … Read More
Car Sharing Contradictions
- Automotive News tells us that GM’s Julia Steyn, head of Maven, is thrilled with the early performance of this captive car sharing initiative, in comments yesterday in Traverse City, Mich.
- Tesla Motor’s Elon Musk anticipates limitless demand resulting from car sharing and automated driving, speaking on the company’s Q2 earnings
One transistor for the future of mmWave?
We’ve heard recently from several sources that millimeter wave radios, once the exclusive realm of defense and satellite use, are now finding homes in applications such as automotive radar and 5G networks. Therein lies a significant opportunity for digital design: moving frequency conversion and filtering from the analog … Read More
E-Class: Saving Lives with Fine Print
Television spots for cars are becoming a little like pharmaceutical ads filled with fine print and warnings about side effects and clarifications. Safety advocates are taking Mercedes to task for its latest TV ads for the 2017 E Class, claiming that the car company is misleading consumers into thinking the car can drive itself.… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet