embedded news: automotive NPUs, ECU virtualization, and more

This week’s roundup of embedded industry news and products below features: aiMotive, Basemark, BittWare, CITiLIGHT, EdgeCortix, ETAS, Foundries.io, MaxLinear, MontaVista Software, Point2 Technology, ProGlove, Renesas Electronics, Semtech Corporation, Silicon Motion, Sternum, STMicroelectronics,

aiMotive said it has shipped final production-validated RTL of the latest generation of its ultra-high efficiency NPU aiWare4 to lead customers. This new shipped RTL claims to deliver up to 5x the performance of the previous aiWare3 NPUs, while using less than 2x the silicon area. PPA constraints were met by fine-tuning the exact feature set of the aiWare4 production RTL to best meet customers’ requirements. Making full use of the physical tile-based layout and dataflow methodologies, the aiWare team demonstrated clock speeds for the production RTL of up to 1.3GHz over the full automotive AEC-Q100 Grade 2 temperature range on a 14nm process.

MaxLinear, Inc. has announced it is to acquire Silicon Motion, a provider of NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices for $3.8 billion. Majeed Ahmad, Editor-in-Chief of EDN, comments, “Combining semiconductors for networking and infrastructure with enterprise storage silicon looks like a good complement for a diversified set of end-markets, including data center, smart home and industrial applications. It’s also a harbinger of another level of integration in the technology stack for both client and enterprise designs.”

Semtech Corporation is working with smart lighting solutions provider CITiLIGHT on its VELOCITi LMS lighting management system for smart cities. As streetlights are fixed assets typically placed 40 to 50 meters apart from each other, VELOCITi LMS features Semtech’s LoRa devices and the LoRaWAN standard to communicate large packets of data over a long range. Any command given to the streetlights, like change of lighting schedule or change in intensity, are executed within seconds as the system offers less than five second command latency and 0.5-1% accuracy on metered data according to CITiLIGHT.

STMicroelectronics has launched its second generation global-shutter image sensor, the VB56G4A, for driver monitoring systems (DMSs), based on ST’s advanced 3D-stacked back-side illuminated (BSI-3D) image sensors. These are more sensitive, smaller, and more reliable than conventional front-side illuminated (FSI) sensors typically used in first-generation DMSs. ST is supplying samples of its new sensor to lead customers now and mass production is scheduled for the beginning of 2023 for adoption in model year 2024 vehicles. The new sensor achieves high quantum efficiency (QE), reaching 24% at 940nm near-infrared wavelength, with linear dynamic range up to 60dB.

AI inference fabless startup EdgeCortix has announced a new product offering and market launch with BittWare, a Molex company. EdgeCortix is embedding its proprietary dynamic neural accelerator (DNA) IP into BittWare’s IA-420F and IA-840F enterprise-class Intel Agilex F-Series based FPGA accelerator cards, creating a high performance, low-latency inference solution using standard machine learning frameworks. EdgeCortix DNA is a flexible IP core for deep learning inference with up to 20 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of dedicated AI compute capability, low latency, and scalable inference engines, specially optimized for streaming (low batch sizes) and high-resolution data.

Renesas Electronics Corporation has launched an integrated automotive ECU virtualization platform that enables designers to integrate multiple applications into a single ECU (electronic control unit) that are safely and securely separated from each other to avoid interference. The solution enables customers to adopt new electrical-electronic (E/E) architectures using MCU-based zone ECUs supporting multiple logical ECUs on one physical ECU. The platform combines Renesas’ RH850/U2x MCUs together with ETAS’ RTA-HVR software, a hypervisor designed for microcontrollers with hardware virtualization support. The ECU virtualization software platform, including the RH850/U2x Zone-ECU starter kit, is available from Renesas starting from the end of May.

Point2 Technology, a provider of connectivity solutions for cloud and 5G infrastructure, has announced Raon, a fully integrated, 4-channel uni-directional clock and data recovery (CDR) and retimer system-on-chip (SoC) optimized for hyperscale data center connectivity. Designed to fit QSFP56 and QSFP-DD pluggable modules over a variety of media including optics, passive copper cables and backplanes, Raon claims to be field proven in multiple hyperscale cloud data centers around the world. The SoC solution includes a complete reference design for 400 Gbps active electrical cables (AEC), active optical cables (AOC) and passive direct attach copper (DAC) cables.

MontaVista Software, LLC, in partnership with Foundries.io, has launched MVEdge, a ready-to-deploy embedded Linux operating system coupled with commercial grade support and maintenance options, targeting intelligent edge and gateway-style devices. MontaVista provides the full DevOps environment, including a pre-integrated security framework for the run-time platform and support for production security processes. MVEdge also include options for different levels of CVE maintenance services, SLA-based support and security configurations up to a certified level for safety/security standards. The initial version of MVEdge is based on Yocto Project 3.1 user-space baseline, and Linux kernel 5.4, and includes platform support across IA/x86, Arm, PPC and MIPS.

Basemark has launched its Rocksolid AR SDK, a full suite of software development tools and runtime systems for the development of automotive in-cockpit AR applications. The Rocksolid AR SDK can be used as a standalone component integrated into existing automotive software and electronics architecture or as an integral part of the Rocksolid Core automotive OS and architecture by Basemark. The solution supports both OpenGL ES and Vulkan APIs, providing options for the customer to deploy the AR applications on a wide variety of different processors.

Nordic Capital has signed an agreement to become the majority owner of the German-based industrial internet of things (IoT) company ProGlove. Established in 2014, ProGlove’s customers include Mercedes Benz, VW, BMW, DHL, XPO Logistics, GAP and Staples. The company provides integrated hardware and analytics software solutions that are built around wearable barcode scanners with multiple IoT sensors allowing for hands-free data capture, hence addressing the growing demand for digitalization across industries, and helping improve worker well-being, increase productivity and optimize efficiency.

Sternum, a provider of autonomous security and analytics for IoT devices, announced new integrations with Kibana and Grafana, two leading open-source data analysis and visualization tools. The integration allows IoT device manufacturers using Sternum’s platform to make the most of the deep visibility it provides by exploring and visualizing the incoming data from live devices through tools they are already relying on for analytics. Through these integrations, device manufacturers can access, visualize, and analyze Sternum’s alerts, anomaly detections, operational insights, and runtime observability metrics directly in their pre-existing Kibana or Grafana instances.

---