California bans ICEs, wants EVs; 5nm in NXP multi-year auto chip agreements; top malware
California will ban the sale of new gasoline vehicles so that by 2035 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles.
NXP Semiconductors announced multi-year supply agreements for its S32 family. Agreements to supply the S32 domain and zonal automotive processors to OEMs will include upcoming 5nm ASIL-D processors.
Keysight Technologies and Flexium Interconnect, a flexible printed circuit board and liquid crystal polymer module vendor, are working on improving millimeter wave modules and material test accuracy and efficiency. Millimeter wave may be used in self-driving cars to interact with V2X more quickly, but mmWave has some issues, such as the signals being easily interfered with. Flexium adopted Keysight’s N5227B PNA Microwave Network Analyzer, upconverters, S93007B Automatic Fixture Removal (AFR) and N1501AE11 Balanced Type Circular Disk Resonator (BCDR) to characterize the mmWave sample circuits.
The U.S. CISA (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) says Palo Alto Networks’ PAN-OS is under active attack and needs to be patched right away. CISA and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) also released a list of 2021 Top Malware Strains. The top strains are Agent Tesla, AZORult, Formbook, Ursnif, LokiBot, MOUSEISLAND, NanoCore, Qakbot, Remcos, TrickBot, and GootLoader.
Microsoft found a security flaw in a ChromeOS component that allows a denial of service attack.
United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) and Cadence have created an analog/mixed-signal flow for 22ULP/ULL process technologies, which are used designs for 5G, IoT, displays, among other applications because 22nm process has ultra-low power consumption and ultra-low leakage. Cadence flow provides a Unified Reliability Interface (URI), which the company says customers can use to monitor the circuit’s reliability and service life.
AMD and Ansys teamed up to offer Ansys’ commercial finite element analysis solvers for AMD Instinct’s accelerators, which are graphic processor units (GPUs). The accelerators combined with the solvers can be used to speed up data center simulations via Ansys Mechanical applications.
A German research project called KISSS will develop improved AI use in welding automation for shipbuilding. Research partners include MEYER WERFT GmbH & Co. KG, Laserline GmbH, SLV Mecklenburg-Vorpommern GmbH and the EAS branch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS.
Renesas says its goals for reducing GHG were certified by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which says the company’s targets are recognized as science-based goals that contribute to the Paris Agreement (Note) climate targets, a global initiative to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial revolution levels.
KLA shared its climate goals and looked back over its 2021 efforts with a report. KLA plans to use 100% renewable electricity across its operations by 2030 and has set a target to reduce its Scope 1 emissions — direct greenhouse (GHG) emissions coming from a corporation — and Scope 2 emissions — indirect GHG associated with the purchase of electricity, steam, heat, or cooling — by 50% by 2030 and achieve net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2050.
SEMI is calling for participants in a new climate consortium.
Keysight announced a new device modeling software suite for semiconductor design.
Name* (Note: This name will be displayed publicly)
Email* (This will not be displayed publicly)
Who’s doing what in next-gen chips, and when they expect to do it.
Manufacturability reaches sufficient level to compete with flip-chip BGA and 2.5D.
Steps are being taken to minimize problems, but they will take years to implement.
But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be mainstream anytime soon.
L5 vehicles need at least 10 more years of development.
Increased transistor density and utilization are creating memory performance issues.
Suppliers are investing new 300mm capacity, but it’s probably not enough. And despite burgeoning 200mm demand, only Okmetic and new players in China are adding capacity.
The industry reached an inflection point where analog is getting a fresh look, but digital will not cede ground readily.
Who’s doing what in next-gen chips, and when they expect to do it.
100% inspection, more data, and traceability will reduce assembly defects plaguing automotive customer returns.
Engineers are finding ways to effectively thermally dissipate heat from complex modules.
Manufacturability reaches sufficient level to compete with flip-chip BGA and 2.5D.
Steps are being taken to minimize problems, but they will take years to implement.