EETimes On Air

This week — we attended a conference hosted by Arm Holdings and report on what we learned about the what's next for circuitry technology. Also, the big data deluge, and how to make sense of it all. And, we’re reasonably sure that by the time people turn 16 years old, they’re mature enough to begin operating a motor vehicle. Shouldn’t we consider doing something similar for autonomous vehicles to, you know, verify they’re mature enough to drive by themselves?

This week, packaging chips in the most advanced systems. There are no rules anymore and we’re going to sort it all out for you. Also, conducting business in the Trump Era. It’s beginning to look like the Court of the Sun King. And, there’s growing enthusiasm for going to Mars. We’ll be talking about getting there, which is one thing; but, we’ll also be talking about getting back, which is another thing altogether.

Sub-retinal chip, tracking down intransigent parking malefactors, and voice control! We sent not one, but two EE Times editors to the annual MEMS & Imaging Sensors Summit in Grenoble last week and we’ll hear from them about what they saw in France. Also this week, connecting the Internet of things — we have a discussion with advocates of Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN on how those two wireless protocols will complement each other.

There are a lot of good reasons to NOT send all of our conversations off to the cloud, but we do it anyway because it’s significantly cheaper to do in the cloud. But what if there were some unexpected, inexpensive alternative for doing voice processing at the edge? Also, we’ll examine reliability in complex systems, and for that we’re going to revisit the Boeing 737 Max, two of which crashed earlier this year. And, we’re also going to revisit autonomous vehicles and driving safety. When it comes to autonomy, there’s still an open question: how safe is safe?

The AI Hardware Summit in Silicon Valley. This year’s edition did not go as planned. Also, the semiconductor industry is, of course global. India has an ambition to build a thriving semiconductor industry, building on the companies based there that have been designing chips for many, many years. Does the country have the infrastructure to make good on its ambitions? And, we have a report from the Frankfurt Motor Show, traditionally one of the biggest shows of the year in the automotive industry. With all the interesting technological innovations that are being developed, you’d think it would have been a pretty exciting show. Yeah, no.

All of the elements of the 5G consumer business are coming together. Network operators are building out infrastructure to expand 5G cellular coverage in more markets. What’s needed next is a wider variety of 5G smartphones. Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung – three of the most important manufacturers of integrated circuits for smartphones – all happened to announce new 5G silicon last week. We talk about what was announced and where 5G goes from here. Artificial intelligence is being used to power the cloud – but what is the cloud, exactly? It turns out there are at least four kinds of clouds. Did the word cumulonimbus just cross you mind? Yeah, no. We’ll discuss the actual divisions in the cloud markets and what kinds of AI are needed for each. Self-driving car companies have been talking about vehicle safety as a competitive feature, but do we really want car companies to compete on safety?

Xilinx just released one honking huge field-programmable gate array. We’ll discuss why anyone would need an FPGA more than one-and-a-half times bigger than the previous biggest. The political protests in Hong Kong have repercussions for the nearby technology hub of Shenzhen – and for the electronics industry at large. Netflix just debuted a documentary called “American Factory” that examines what happened when a Chinese manufacturer of glass products for the automotive market tried to open a plant in the US. The goals of the Chinese and the Americans were clearly aligned, but both groups held expectations they never discussed with each other, much to everyone’s sorrow.

Homomorphic encryption. It’s… well, it’s really complicated. Just stick around and we’ll explain it all. Chinese memory chip supplier GigaDevices just make a huge splash in China introducing a line of RISC-V microcontrollers – the company claims they’re the first general purpose RISC-V MCUs ever. We’ll discuss why this MCUs are significant. Ultra WideBand is back, this time with some brand new capabilities. NXP and Volkswagen collaborated on a clever anti-theft technique for cars that makes use of the new Ultra Wideband. Today we’ve got a discussion with NXP CTO Lars Reger and Maik Rohde of Volkswagen as they discuss the new anti-theft approach, and also where they plan to take Ultra Wideband next.

AMS decided to purchase Osram. The former specializes in sensors, the latter in photonics; together they’ll chart an intriguing technological roadmap. We’ll find out what the combination will mean for the market. The Hot Chips conference was held this week. We’ve got a rundown of one of the hottest, an unconventional wafer-scale AI processor from secretive startup Cerebras. Also today: smart water bottles. These are computerized water bottles complete with display screens and WiFI connectivity. The bottles run apps designed to entice your children to drink more water. You might be asking yourself: How smart is a smart water bottle? Well, at the moment, they are being bamboozled by six-year-olds.

This is your Briefing for the week ending August 16th. Photonics – it’s not just for fiber optics anymore. In this episode, we’ve got a discussion about photonics, quantum sensors, and the potential for an all-optical computer. Broadcom bought Symantec last week. We ask editor Rick Merritt, Why on Earth a chip company would want to get into the market for business software? Over the years, the EDA industry has developed some marvelously sophisticated tools for testing and verifying the designs of highly complex integrated circuits. This week we have an interview with the CEO of a startup – a company that has its roots in EDA – about the tools it has developed to improve the testing process for autonomous vehicles. The tools will help AV companies determine if they’re testing what they think they’re testing.

Are you one of the hundreds of millions of people who can't wait to get a 5G cell phone? Your wait is almost over. Almost. Do you remember ultra-wideband? It was proposed a few years ago. Didn't catch on. But now it's back. The new ultra-wideband is based on a different technology, has new capabilities and is aimed at completely different applications. You'd think they'd come up with a new name, yeah? Also this week, Dylan McGrath got a rare one-on-one interview with Bob Swan, the CEO of Intel. In an industry that has seen its share of massive egos over the years, Bob Swan stands out by not standing out. When Intel's previous CEO left the company, Swan-- then the company's chief financial officer-- agreed to lead the company... but only on an interim basis until Intel's board could find the right person to give the job to.

This is your Briefing for the week ending August 2nd. We want the Internet of things to be smart, but being smart requires processing power – which will be lacking in millions of IoT devices. It’s what we call in the business “a conundrum.” But – there may be an answer! You’ll hear what that is. As we reported last week, the biggest companies in the world are beginning to compete with their own chip suppliers. The latest example is Alibaba, which just released a high-performance processor of its own design. Alibaba’s move is significant for technological, financial, and political reasons. We’ll look into that. Also, you’d think that the people building autonomous vehicles are using sound design principles.

This week we’re mixing it up a bit. In this episode, we’re going to focus on a single topic. It’s how the world’s biggest companies are doing business in ways no company has before – and what that might mean for everybody – not just the technology industry.

This week… Artificial intelligence is a vastly complex market. There’s a fierce competition among hardware vendors to be the best platform for AI applications. But first, you have to know what it means to be “the best.” This week, analyst Karl Freund from Moor Insights talks to us about the latest AI benchmarks. Researchers are re-imagining what – fundamentally – a vehicle is. One company just put everything other than the chassis – literally everything – entirely inside the wheels. We’ll explore that and other proposals. And it’s the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 space mission – the first time people set foot on the moon. This week we look back – and also look forward to going back to the moon.

Our stories this week: You might recall pilot Chesley Sullenberger. He became a hero a few years back for crash landing a disabled passenger airliner into New York's Hudson River with no loss of life. He recently appeared in front of Congress to testify about the crashes of the Boeing 737. We discuss his testimony and what it means for Boeing and for other engineering companies. We've got an on-site report from Semicon West, including a revised estimate of growth in the chip market in 2019. And guest commentators John Petty and Kathleen Ma have just concluded a major report on the workstation market, which has seen some profound changes over the years.

This week… Facial recognition is being deployed more frequently, but is the technology ready? And, are we ready for it? President Trump said he is lifting official restrictions on doing business with Huawei, an important supplier to communications companies around the world. What does that mean for the global electronics industry moving forward? And we talk with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Alex Lidow about Moore’s Law, gallium nitride, and easing at least one of the indignities of aging.

This week… The French research institute LETI held a conference on artificial intelligence at the edge. What does putting AI on the edge of the network mean, and what’s the advantage? EE Times editors were in Grenoble, and filed a report. A few weeks ago, PCI introduced a new ultra-fast networking specification that will make data centers perform even better, and that will make the internet faster and more capable. A few days ago, PCI unexpectedly doubled the speed again. EE Times editors were at the annual Sensors Expo, which has become an important conference for the Internet of things. Also, the prevailing wisdom is that self-driving vehicles will be safer than human drivers. But what if there’s a third option – one that’s just as safe as self-driving cars are supposed to be?

Our lineup this week includes: A guided tour through London’s Tech Week, an annual extravaganza of new technologies. Unsurprisingly, this year there was an emphasis on artificial intelligence. We’ll have a report on the race to build the fastest supercomputers. And, you know those GPS apps you use for driving? Self-driving vehicles use maps too, but they need maps that are far more accurate. First up, EETimes editor Sally Ward-Foxton attended several events during London’s Tech Week. The UK is bidding to become a major hub for AI technology, but the same idea has occurred to other countries as well. And a quick translation of English to English for you. Glastonbury is a music festival not dissimilar to the New Orleans Jazz Festival, where savvy festival veterans know to show up in knee-high rubber boots because enormous mud puddles are not uncommon.

This week: RISC-V has profound implications for the smartphone market; we checked to see if it’s ready. Moore’s Law will end –  unless maybe chiplets? Engineers are getting drawn into the gig economy, and it’s not the ones you’d think. And after 40 years, TI’s Speak & Spell speaks again.

In this week's briefing we discuss Infineon's bombshell announcement: the $10 billion dollar acquisition that seemed to come out of nowhere – Infineon bought Cypress Semiconductor, and the Design Automation Conference – DAC. If you know what’s happening with design tools, that gives you a good handle on what’s happening with the semiconductor industry.