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Jim Keller, CEO at Tenstorrent

Jim Keller Sketches AI Strategy to Bypass Nvidia

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
In an AI market totally dominated by Nvidia, breaking the GPU giant’s logjam is, at minimum, a challenge for anyone, even a legendary CPU architect. However, Jim Keller’s secret weapon is not his reputation. It’s his belief that open-source policies accelerate innovation.

Jim Keller is a legendary CPU architect, his name linked to a host of commercially successful processors. Over three decades in several organizations, Keller, as a hands-on engineer, worked with or led teams who have developed architecture ranging from Alpha at Digital Equipment Corporation, K8, K12 and Zen at AMD, Apple’s A4, A5 and other apps processors, to the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Computer chip at Tesla.

Keller resembles a talented actor with a nose for great scripts and starring in a string of award-winning movies. However, it remains to be seen whether Tenstorrent, an AI hardware startup where Keller graduated from early investor to CEO today, will be the winner in the evolving AI race.

Read More »Jim Keller Sketches AI Strategy to Bypass Nvidia
Intel Hones Funding Plans for its Mammoth Fab Splurge

Intel Hones Funding Plans for its Mammoth Fab Splurge

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake ?
Intel Corp.’s fab building spree has put it on the hook for capital expenditure valued at tens of billions of dollars at a time of dwindling cash flow. Western governments are supportive and Intel, too, is deploying a financial approach unusual in the chip sector. Will these suffice? Quite unlikely. Intel cannot pull back, however, so it will have to take on even more loans to fulfill its burgeoning fab pledges.

Intel Corp. wants to dramatically alter the semiconductor production landscape.

If it succeeds, the chipmaker will dramatically shift a hefty chunk of manufacturing activities swiftly from one region to another, accelerate the rebalancing of the electronics supply chain and impact the dynamics of economic, geopolitical and security discourse between the world’s major powers.

Read More »Intel Hones Funding Plans for its Mammoth Fab Splurge
Edge AI

Renesas Picks Its Battle on Edge AI

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
In pursuit of the edge AI market, Renesas must bridge two disparate worlds. The more probabilistic AI realm deals with data and model creation. The embedded world – more deterministic in nature – does linear programming. Renesas must transit between these worlds without jeopardizing its status in either.

Embedded system designers are curious about AI, but they aren’t necessarily interested in coding. Put bluntly, AI makes them uncomfortable.

Herein lies the dilemma for leading MCU/MPU suppliers, including Renesas, who covet the seemingly large edge-AI market.

Read More »Renesas Picks Its Battle on Edge AI
Auto Industry Euphoric over Chiplets. Why?

Auto Industry Euphoric over Chiplets. Why?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Although actual chiplet-implemented automotive semiconductor devices aren’t here yet, automakers are busily imagining what chiplets can bring to their future. Is the chiplet mania wishful thinking, or will it finally open the future for flexible, scalable and differentiated automotive semiconductors that carmakers have always wanted?

Responding to a strong pull from the industry, Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), an international R&D organization backed by strong corporate partnerships, is kicking off the first world-wide automotive-focused chiplet event in Leuven, Belgium on June 20th. It will bring together representatives from more than 25 companies, including tier ones, tier twos, OEMs and tool vendors, Also invited are outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies, and foundries.

Read More »Auto Industry Euphoric over Chiplets. Why?
In-Vehcle Network

Ethernet Switches: Marvell’s Ticket to Automotive

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake: 
For more than a decade, the automotive industry has known the day is imminent for an inevitable change in its in-vehicle network backbone from Controller Area Network (CAN) to Ethernet. Now, more than ever, carmakers know they must cross the chasm. Marvell is showing how.   

Car companies must sink or swim in a tempest turbulent with big changes in the technologies they use and the business models they pursue.

Read More »Ethernet Switches: Marvell’s Ticket to Automotive
Nvidia CEO at Computex 2023

AI Rivalry Heats up, But Catching Nvidia Won’t Be Easy

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?

Catching up with Nvidia in the artificial intelligence market will not be easy but many in the high-tech world are determined to try. Chipmakers are leading the calvary. Hyperscalers, OEMs and others aren’t far behind. They’ve got their work cut out for them.

12 years ago, Nvidia Corp. placed a huge wager on artificial intelligence (AI). Payday came recently in the form of a historic valuation on Wall Street.

But the company had barely a week to celebrate its new status as the world’s most valuable semiconductor company before it became clear it will have its hands full defending its position in the AI market.

Read More »AI Rivalry Heats up, But Catching Nvidia Won’t Be Easy

Qualcomm Envy Sparks Nvidia-MediaTek Deal

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
The partnership between MediaTek and Nvidia clarifies a gap in the automotive SoC platform. Missing are a unified software development environment and a hardware solution that can scale both up and down. Who has an argument and actual solutions good enough to convince undecided carmakers to adopt their platform?

The recent Nvidia-MediaTek deal to partner on automotive SoCs reveals the intensity of the rivalry among Qualcomm and other automotive chip companies. Nvidia’s move is a clear effort to catch up with Qualcomm. 

It also indicates that many mainstream car OEMs haven’t picked sides on the next-generation automotive platform, opening an opportunity that MediaTek can’t afford to miss. 

Read More »Qualcomm Envy Sparks Nvidia-MediaTek Deal
Obsolescence at BMW: Planned or Just Short-Sighted?

Obsolescence at BMW: Planned or Just Short-Sighted?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Running updated software properly in an existing vehicle sometimes demands a hardware upgrade — replacing, for example, a 3G modem with a 4G cellular modem. Are carmakers ready for this sort of mass retrofit?

Robert Hollingsworth is not happy with BMW. The German automaker declined to upgrade a 3G cellular modem in Hollingsworth’s BMW X5 after all major US cellular operators shut down the legacy network support in 2022.

Yet, the software-defined vehicles is the thing today, among many car OEMs.

Read More »Obsolescence at BMW: Planned or Just Short-Sighted?
Inventory overhang

Inventory Quagmire: From JIT to JIC and now Just-too-Much

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
Companies in the electronics supply chain piled on record inventory-related risks during the last semiconductor shortages. Even normally cautious component distributors joined in a race to meet clients’ needs. But inventories have since ballooned. And now, having tried just-in-time and just-in-case parts management systems, the industry must decide which of the two is optimal now that it has too much inventory.

It was time for bold supply chain actions. Huge profits and market share gains were at stake, so Arrow Electronics Inc., the world’s largest distributor, tossed out its conservative inventory acquisition rule book and racked up billions of dollars in non-cancellable components orders.

It was the new normal for an industry hard pressed to meet surging demand for components. But was it the most efficient solution?

Read More »Inventory Quagmire: From JIT to JIC and now Just-too-Much
Bucking the trend

Infineon and ST Buck Chip Downturn but for How Long?

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:
Infineon and STMicroelectronics will defy the projected 2023 semiconductor market downturn on continued strength in the auto, energy and industrial sectors. Eventually, though, there will be a supply chain reckoning even in these hot markets. The European chip market leaders must prepare now for the days when orders precipitously drop as customers focus on depleting inventories.

The semiconductor market downturn is still raw but it’s party time in Munich and Geneva.

Read More »Infineon and ST Buck Chip Downturn but for How Long?