Skip to content

Featured

Google and Synaptics Kick off 2025 Edge AI Race

Google and Synaptics Jointly Kick off 2025 Edge AI Race

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:

Artificial intelligence is expanding fast from the large language models to “Edge AI,” where more chipmakers and equipment manufacturers expect to make a major impact by tying it up with Internet of Things (IoT). Companies are racing to offer AI at the Edge, but they are also collaborating with partners across the design chain. With their announced collaboration so early in the new year, Synaptics and Google are staking out a position they want the rest of the rest of the market to adopt.

Synaptics Inc. and Google Inc. have announced a collaboration to enhance Edge AI for the Internet of Things (IoT). This partnership aims to optimize multimodal processing for context-aware computing by integrating Google’s MLIR-compliant machine learning (ML) core with Synaptics Astra hardware, along with open-source software and tools.

The companies said their collaboration will accelerate the development of AI devices for IoT, supporting various modalities such as vision, image, voice, and sound for seamless interactivity in applications like wearables, appliances, entertainment, and more.

Read More »Google and Synaptics Jointly Kick off 2025 Edge AI Race
Intel Needs an Active, Competent Board, not a ‘Savior’ CEO

Intel Needs an Active, Competent Board, not a ‘Savior’ CEO

By Bolaji Ojo

Michele Johnston Holthaus can still get confirmed as Intel Corp.’s next CEO, vaulting to the top of the management team from her current title of interim co-CEO. But Holthaus would not be the perfect candidate – one presumably with a degree and background in engineering like the last CEO Patrick Gelsinger. She wouldn’t be at a loss in the position, either. Holthaus has the potentials to become a great leader at Intel.

Still, the substantive CEO question isn’t the priority for Intel now. What the public and the chipmaker’s various audiences want to have answers to are more pressing questions about its future. Questions such as: will Intel spin off its foundry unit or retain it as an inhouse operation; will it go ahead and spend billions of dollars on the new fabs promised by Gelsinger or will it seek to conserve funds; what’s the vision for Intel and; what’s the latest on its turnaround plan?

Read More »Intel Needs an Active, Competent Board, not a ‘Savior’ CEO
AI Past, Present, and Future (Part 3)

AI Past, Present, and Future (Part 3)

By Clive (Max) Maxfield

What’s at stake:

AI is revolutionizing everything from creative endeavors to caregiving, relationships, labor markets, and even warfare. As we look toward an AI-driven future, the stakes lie in balancing its immense potential to enhance our lives with the ethical, societal, and existential risks it poses.

The 1984 American science fiction action film, The Terminator, featured Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic assassin from the future. The underlying plot is that an artificially intelligent system called Skynet becomes self-aware, determines that humans are a threat to its existence, and decides to eradicate humanity from the face of the Earth. Hold that thought…

In Part 1 of this mini-series on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), we predominantly pondered the days of AI in the past. In Part 2, we turned our attention to AI in the present. Now it’s time to cogitate and ruminate on the potential (both good and ill) for AI in the future.

Read More »AI Past, Present, and Future (Part 3)
China isn’t for Everyone, maybe not Even Nvidia

China Isn’t for Everyone, Maybe Not Even Nvidia

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:

Nvidia stands at a crossroads. Its business is growing fast but it must satisfy hard taskmasters (China and US) with conflicting objectives. It must pick one of them, abandon the second and accept that fate has given it the opportunity to make that choice. Nvidia’s exponential growth means it can afford to exercise this option in a tech world being driven bonkers by nationalism and geopolitics. All signs point to a worsening of the unsustainable situation. Companies will eventually be forced to pick a side. Nvidia must lead the way. Will it be that bold?

Nvidia Corp. needs an urgent China exit strategy. The alternative is to abide by strangulating and conflicting requirements being imposed upon the global electronics industry by rivals America and China.

The American semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) systems builder may be one of the world’s most valuable companies, but in the hands of both the US and China it is a mere pawn in an increasingly fractious geopolitical game.

It’s time to exercise a different, and drastic option, for China.

Read More »China Isn’t for Everyone, Maybe Not Even Nvidia
GM Rips Away The Cruise 'Band-Aid'

GM Rips Away the Cruise ‘Band-Aid’

We got Phil Koopman, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and Bryan Reimer, research scientist, as our podcast guests to discuss how GM’s decision to end its Cruise experiment affects the future of ADAS, robotaxis and personal autonomous vehicles (PAV).

Wiith AI Accelerator Incorporated, ST Calls Calls new MCU a '3rd Seminal Moment'

With AI accelerator integrated, ST Calls New MCU a ‘3rd Seminal Moment’

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
As MCU suppliers struggle with bloated inventory, ST is turning to AI at the edge. But is ST’s newly launched NPU-accelerated MPU a big enough leap to save the company’s MCU business? Remi El-Ouazzane, President of the Microcontrollers, Digital ICs and RF Products Group (MDRF) at STMicroelectronics believes so.

The MCU market is in turmoil.

The first symptom is the overall MCU business climate.

Declining demand for automotive MCUs forced Microchip CEO Ganesh Moorthy to retire last month, announced in tandem with Microchip’s decision to close its Arizona fab.

Similarly, amid similar inventory challenges and market pressures, STMicroelectronics reported a whopping 41 percent decline in its third quarter MCU sales. In parallel, ST faced  increased competition from Chinese MCU manufacturers and the diminishing demand for factory and industrial automation in Europe.

Read More »With AI accelerator integrated, ST Calls New MCU a ‘3rd Seminal Moment’
Whither STMicroelectronics after Annus Horibilis?

ST Looks Beyond Troubled MCU Waters

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:

STMicroelectronics is resetting market expectations for its intermediate term performance. It’s a good move for the company, considering the challenges it faces in key market segments. Executives believe the company’s strong technology portfolio, IDM structure complimented by foundry partners and intense focus on key markets will help it achieve goals set years ago. Resetting goals may be a brilliant move but a tactical retreat and regrouping may prove even more critical to achieving the new objectives. Will ST deliver?

STMicroelectronics NV believes it will be a $20 billion company by 2030. For now, though, Jean-Marc Chery, president and CEO at ST, won’t say what revenues the company will have in 2025 and 2026. 

Chery calls 2025 “a transition year” for ST. Go ahead and add 2026 – with or without Chery’s consent. ST will by the end of 2024 fall $4 billion short of its record revenue of $17.3 billion in 2023. The CFO believes ST will cross that threshold again in 2027 or 2028.

Take your pick. 

By 2030, though ST expects revenue to be about $20 billion, a goal set years before. By then, Chery, now 64 years old, will likely have moved on, no longer CEO at ST. If you were to pose a question to the CEO in 2030, someone else will have to answer in Chery’s titular name. That’s the way this game is played. 

Read More »ST Looks Beyond Troubled MCU Waters