By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
After shedding Mobileye, Intel has searched its soul to intuit how it can make a difference in a congested automotive chip market. Rather than shoving more teraflops into a car’s central compute technology, Intel believes its new mission is addressing unanswered questions with which carmakers are grappling — safer, software-defined vehicle architecture, much more energy efficient EVs and the dawn of the chiplet. With no quick fixes possible, is Intel ready to play the long game?

Twenty-five years ago, when Microsoft at CES pitched a plan to wedge its operating system and PC technology into the living room, TV set manufacturers wept crocodile tears for consumers. “The last thing we want,” CE companies said, is “the blue screen of death on their living room TVs.”

Fast forward to 2024. Intel Corp. slouches toward CES, unveiling its all-out plans for the automotive market. Will this moment in history become yet another example of the PC industry horning in on somebody else’s business?

Not necessarily.

Read More »Intel: It’s the Whole Car, Not Teraflops

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
The headlines of 2023 have heralded the march of generative AI, geopolitical tussles over trade and technology and a bubble of government funding to private companies for local chip production. As a result, the semiconductor industry has more political power, economic force and self-importance than ever before. The question in 2024 is how responsibly and effectively chip suppliers will end up flexing all this muscle.

Unquestionably, the chip industry has become a star on the political and economic stages, as the Wall Street Journal aptly noted.  The trend will continue in 2024, potentially altering the whos, hows and whats of the semiconductor landscape.

While technological progress has created a fiercely competitive market among leading chip suppliers, 2023 also solidified the semiconductor market around single winners – with no comparable rivals – in the critical areas of lithography (ASML) and foundries (TSMC). That gap between champions and also-rans could eventually recoil on the chip sector, with the industry’s strength limited by the weakest link in the supply chain.

The Ojo-Yoshida Report sat down with Jean-Christophe Eloy, president and CEO of Yole Group (Lyon, France), to hear his assessment of 2023. He told us what stood out (events, companies, technology and business/market trends), what concerns him most (boobytraps awaiting the chip industry), and big shifts he sees in China’s semiconductor plans (and their impact on the West).  

Read More »Chip World ‘24: Prospects to Embrace, Details to Sweat

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
If 2023 marked the public’s disillusionment with robotaxis, 2024 augurs a big shift toward advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) crammed with automated features. Expect the auto industry to play high-stakes games on the safety of highly automated driving, the accelerated use of embedded artificial intelligence, and a fresh emphasis on in-vehicle comfort and convenience.

The $64,000 question in 2024 boils down to this: what sort of future – vehicle platforms and applications – is envisioned by carmakers not named Tesla? Are these carmakers with Tesla, or prepared to chart their own destiny?

Read More »ADAS in 2024: Don’t Expect Clarity on Autonomy & Safety

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
After the national safety regulator’s multi-year investigation into nearly 1,000 crashes involving Tesla’s Autopilot, Tesla agreed to a “voluntary recall” of two million cars — almost all its vehicles sold in the United States since 2021. A big question, however, is what exactly Tesla is prepared to do to fix the safety defect.

This was a historic, hard-won victory for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But Tesla scored an even bigger win.

Read More »How Tesla’s Plea Deal Foiled Autopilot Remedy