TSMC is one of the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturers, and the company is currently the leading provider of the newest technologies like 5 nm and 3 nm, along with advanced packaging. So far, TSMC's biggest customers have included Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, etc., where the company has mainly produced chips for mobile phones and PCs/Servers. However, Taiwan's Economics Ministry has announced that they have spoken to TSMC and have reached an agreement that the company will be putting away some additional capacity for the automotive industry, specifically for the production of automotive chips. The reason for this push is the increasing shortage of semiconductors for automakers, experienced due to the Trump administration sanctions against key Chinese chip factories.

TSMC has stated that "Other than continuously maximizing utilization of our existing capacity, Dr. Wei also confirmed in our investors' conference that we are working with customers closely and moving some of their mature nodes to more advanced nodes, where we have a better capacity to support them". The company also states that their capacities are fully utilized for now, however, TSMC has ensured ministry that "if production can be increased by optimizing production capacity, it will cooperate with the government to regard automotive chips as a primary application." That means that TSMC will not decrease any existing capacity, but rather just evaluate any increased capacity for automotive chip production.

DIALOG SEMICONDUCTOR, a leading provider of battery and power management, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and Industrial edge computing solutions and GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ), the world's leading specialty foundry, today announced that they have entered into an agreement in which Dialog licenses its Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) technology to GLOBALFOUNDRIES. The resistive ram (ReRAM)-based technology was pioneered by Adesto Technologies which was recently acquired by Dialog Semiconductor in 2020. GLOBALFOUNDRIES will first offer Dialog's CBRAM as an embedded, non-volatile memory (NVM) option on its 22FDX platform, with the plan to extend to other platforms.

Dialog's proprietary and production proven CBRAM technology is a low power NVM solution designed to enable a range of applications from IoT and 5G connectivity to artificial intelligence (AI). Low power consumption, high read/write speeds, reduced manufacturing costs and tolerance for harsh environments make CBRAM particularly suitable for consumer, medical, and select industrial and automotive applications. Furthermore, CBRAM technology enables cost-effective embedded NVM for advanced technology nodes required for products in these markets.

Imagination Technologies announces IMG B-Series, a new expanded range of GPU IP. With its advanced multi-core architecture, B-Series enables Imagination customers to reduce power while reaching higher levels of performance than any other GPU IP on the market. It delivers up to 6 TFLOPS of compute, with an up to 30% reduction in power and 25% area reduction over previous generations and up to 2.5x higher fill rate than competing IP cores.

With IMG A-Series Imagination made an exceptional leap over previous generations, resulting in an industry-leading position for performance and power characteristics. B-Series is a further evolution delivering the highest performance per mm² for GPU IP and offering new configurations for lower power and up to 35% lower bandwidth for a given performance target, making it a compelling solution for top-tier designs.

Today, Arm unveiled new computing solutions to accelerate autonomous decision-making with safety capability across automotive and industrial applications. The new suite of IP includes the Arm Cortex -A78AE CPU, Arm Mali -G78AE GPU, and Arm Mali-C71AE ISP, engineered to work together in combination with supporting software, tools and system IP to enable silicon providers and OEMs to design for autonomous workloads. These products will be deployed in a range of applications, from enabling more intelligence and configurability in smart manufacturing to enhancing ADAS and digital cockpit applications in automotive.

"Autonomy has the potential to improve every aspect of our lives, but only if built on a safe and secure computing foundation," said Chet Babla, vice president, Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm. "As autonomous decision-making becomes more pervasive, Arm has designed a unique suite of technology that prioritizes safety while delivering highly scalable, power efficient compute to enable autonomous decision-making across new automotive and industrial opportunities."

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ), the world's leading specialty foundry, announced today at its Global Technology Conference the next generation of its FDXTM platform, 22FDX+, to meet the ever-growing need for higher performance and ultra-low power requirements of connected devices. GF's industry-leading 22FDX (22 nm FD-SOI) platform has realized $4.5 billion in design wins, with more than 350 million chips shipped to customers around the world.

GF's new 22FDX+ builds on the company's 22FDX platform, offering a broader set of features that provide high performance, ultra-low power, and specialty features and capabilities for the newest generation of designs. The differentiated offering will further empower customers to create chips that are specifically optimized for Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, automotive, and satellite communications applications.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, is pleased to announce that it has received IATF 16949 certification according to the IATF-16949:2016 International Automotive Quality Management System (QMS). The certification is acknowledged as the industry's highest standard of system and process quality for automotive suppliers.

The attainment of the IATF 16949:2016 certification is an affirmation of ADATA's commitment to offering products and solutions of the highest standards. ADATA is ready to facilitate the coming 5G evolution in the automotive industry with reliable and cost-effective solutions that will help enable the development of the Internet of Vehicle (IoV), including autonomous driving, smart parking, safe navigation, and collision avoidance among others.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ) today announced its embedded magnetoresistive non-volatile memory (eMRAM) on the company's 22 nm FD-SOI (22FDX ) platform has entered production, and GF is working with several clients with multiple production tape-outs scheduled in 2020. Today's announcement represents a significant industry milestone, demonstrating the scalability of eMRAM as a cost-effective option at advanced process nodes for Internet of Things (IoT), general-purpose microcontrollers, automotive, edge-AI (Artificial Intelligence), and other low-power applications.

Designed as a replacement for high-volume embedded NOR flash (eFlash), GF's eMRAM allows designers to extend their existing IoT and microcontroller unit architectures to access the power and density benefits of technology nodes below 28 nm.

CES might be over, but our coverage from the event continues. TechPowerUp prides itself on visiting a lot of brands, big and small, and bringing to you our first-hand account of everything new. EK Waterblocks, or simply EKWB henceforth, had a large room in the Mandalay Bay with a big open window spanning the room, which made for challenging photography, but a well-laid out open plan made it easy for us to go over the various product segments they had to display. This post will go briefly over them, but keep in mind that nearly all products showcased do not have set retail availability info just yet.

The very first thing that caught our eyes was their new line of AIO cooling solutions, now simply called EK-AIO. These are the successors to the EK-MLC Phoenix, and the EK-Predator from before, both of which did not really change the status quo of the pre-filled AIO CPU cooling market. EK hopes that the new series, of which again they are working to finalizing the design before committing to a release window and pricing information, will change this. As with most of their new products, the EK-AIO coolers integrate RGB support with 9 dRGB LEDs in the pump/block and more on the EK-Vardar RGB fans that are used on the radiator itself. The EK-AIO series is planned to come in 120/240/360 mm radiator size options, with 1/2/3 fans respectively. Read past the break for more from the Slovenian watercooling brand.

Toshiba Memory Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it has begun sampling new Automotive JEDEC UFS Version 2.1 embedded memory solutions utilizing 3D flash memory. The new products are embedded flash memory devices that integrate the company's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and a controller in a single package. The sequential read and write performance are improved by approximately 6 percent and 33 percent, respectively, over existing devices.

The company's Automotive UFS supports a wide temperature range (-40°C to +105°C), meets AEC-Q100 Grade 2 requirements and offers the enhanced reliability required by various automotive applications. The lineup consists of four capacities: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND flash products, today launched the ADATA IUSP33F PCIe ball grid array (BGA) solid state drive (SSD). The SSD sports a form factor that is 80 percent more compact than M.2 2242 SSDs. Combined with a PCIe Gen3x2 interface and 3D Flash memory for excellent performance and durability, the IUSP33F is an ideal solution for slim-form-factor tablets, notebooks, hybrids, mini-PCs, thin clients, and wearables.

"We are thrilled to be introducing the new IUSP33F SSD, a compact solution that will enable next-generation tablets, ultrabooks, and other slim devices, but without compromising on performance and reliability," said Hedi Huang, Sales Directorof ADATA. "But the versatility of the IUSP33F goes beyond just these applications, and are also well-suited for new emerging applications in areas such as robotics, augmented and virtual reality, and automotive.

(Editor's Note: NVIDIA continues to spread its wings in the AI and automotive markets, where it has rapidly become the de facto player. While the company's gaming products have certainly been the ones to project the company's image - and profits - that allowed it to come to be one of the world's leading tech companies, it's hard to argue that AI and datacenter accelerators has become one of the chief departments in raking in profits for the company. The company's vision for Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous driving and the future of our connected cities is an inspiring one, that came straight from yesterday's science fiction. Here's hoping the human mind, laws and city design efforts accompany these huge technological leaps -or at least don't strangle them too much.)

Press a button on your smartphone and go. Daimler, Bosch and NVIDIA have joined forces to bring fully automated and driverless vehicles to city streets, and the effects will be felt far beyond the way we drive. While the world's billion cars travel 10 trillion miles per year, most of the time these vehicles are sitting idle, taking up valuable real estate while parked. And when driven, they are often stuck on congested roadways. Mobility services will solve these issues plaguing urban areas, capture underutilized capacity and revolutionize the way we travel.

Marvell, a leader in storage, networking, and connectivity semiconductor solutions today introduced the industry's first high-efficiency wireless 802.11ax solution with 2x2 plus 2x2 concurrent dual Wi-Fi , dual-mode Bluetooth 5/Bluetooth Low Energy and 802.11p for connected vehicles. The new 88Q9098 combo solution enables gigabit-level performance, superior reliability, and enhanced security for the car and extends Marvell's leadership in providing comprehensive 802.11ax solutions. Marvell's innovative concurrent dual Wi-Fi architecture sets a new technology precedent, integrating two complete Wi-Fi subsystems into a single SoC, and enabling two independent 2x2 data streams to run concurrently and at full throughput. One use case demanding this capability is when one Wi-Fi radio is dedicated to mobile phone projection while the other is streaming video to and from mobile/accessory devices in the car. The 88Q9098 enables reuse of a single solution across infotainment and telematics applications, delivering market-leading multimedia streaming, secure over-the-air updates, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and hot-spot functionality.

We're excited to kick off Maker Faire Bay Area by expanding our IoT lineup with two new boards: the MKR Vidor 4000 and the Uno WiFi Rev 2.

The MKR Vidor 4000 is the first-ever Arduino based on an FPGA chip, equipped with a SAM D21 microcontroller, a u-blox Nina W102 WiFi module, and an ECC508 crypto chip for secure connection to local networks and the Internet. MKR Vidor 4000 is the latest addition to the MKR family, designed for a wide range of IoT applications, with its distinctive form factor and substantial computational power for high performance. The board will be coupled with an innovative development environment, which aims to democratize and radically simplify access to the world of FPGAs.

Intel's Mobileye, the AI and self-driving feature the blue giant acquired last year for a cool $15.3 billion, has just announced, via an exclusive report to Reuters, that they've secured a contract to provide some 8 million self-driving systems to an European automaker. The deal is a future-focused one, and will see, by 2021, distribution for Intel's EyeQ5 chip, which is designed for fully autonomous driving - an upgrade to the EyeQ4 that will be rolled out in the coming weeks, Reuters reports, according to senior vice president for advanced development and strategy at Mobileye Erez Dagan.

Amnon Shashua, Mobileye's chief executive, said that "By the end of 2019, we expect over 100,000 Level 3 cars [where the car is self-driving but still allows for user intervention should the system be unable to progress for more than 10 seconds] with Mobileye installed." This deal is sure to make Intel even more of a player in the automotive space, where NVIDIA and a number of other high-profile companies have been making strides in recent years.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing 10-nanometer (nm)-class 16-gigabit (Gb) LPDDR4X DRAM for automobiles. The latest LPDDR4X features high performance and energy efficiency while significantly raising the thermal endurance level for automotive applications that often need to operate in extreme environments. The 10nm-class DRAM will also enable the industry's fastest automotive DRAM-based LPDDR4X interface with the highest density.

"The 16Gb LPDDR4X DRAM is our most advanced automotive solution yet, offering global automakers outstanding reliability, endurance, speed, capacity and energy efficiency, ," said Sewon Chun, senior vice president of memory marketing at Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will continue to closely collaborate with manufacturers developing diverse automotive systems, in delivering premium memory solutions anywhere."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass production of a 256-gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) solution with advanced features based on automotive specifications from the JEDEC UFS 3.0 standard, for the first time in the industry. Following the memory breakthrough of the automotive industry's first 128GB eUFS in September, 2017, Samsung's 256GB eUFS is now being shipped to automotive manufacturers preparing the market for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), next-generation infotainment systems and new-age dashboards in luxury vehicles.

As thermal management is crucial for automotive memory applications, Samsung's 256GB eUFS extends the temperature range to between -40°C and 105°C for both operational and power-saving modes. Warranties for conventional embedded multimedia card (eMMC) 5.1 solutions generally cover -25°C to 85°C for vehicles in operation and -40°C to 85°C when in idle or power-saving mode.

Aquantia Corp., a leader in high-speed, Multi-Gig Ethernet connectivity solutions, today announced that its automotive networking portfolio is the 10 Gbps Ethernet connectivity solution for the NVIDIA DRIVE Xavier and DRIVE Pegasus platforms for autonomous vehicles. The high-performance NVIDIA AI computing platforms featuring Aquantia Multi-Gig networking will be available to automotive partners starting in the first quarter of 2018.

NVIDIA DRIVE AI car computers use deep learning to process data from multiple cameras, radar, LIDAR and other sensors throughout the vehicle. To deliver Level 4 and Level 5 driving - which is categorized as a fully autonomous vehicle - hundreds of trillions of deep learning operations per second (TOPS) need to receive and process sensor data and immediately communicate critical decisions throughout the vehicle's systems. For example, the DRIVE Xavier processor parses all the information to understand a full 360-degree perception around the vehicle, and determine the presence and movement of pedestrians, other vehicles and objects as it plans a safe path forward. The Aquantia Ethernet products communicate the data and decisions back and forth throughout the system at 10 Gbps over automotive Ethernet cables to help provide a seamless autonomous experience.

So much of the discussion around autonomous driving has naturally focused on the car as a mode of transportation, but as driverless cars become a reality, we must start thinking of the automobile as a new type of consumer space. In fact, we have barely scratched the surface in thinking about the way cars will be designed, the interaction among passengers, and how passengers will spend time while they are riding and not driving. In this respect, autonomous driving is today's biggest game changer, offering a new platform for innovation from in-cabin design and entertainment to life-saving safety systems.

Advancing what's possible in autonomous driving, today at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Intel announced a collaboration with entertainment company Warner Bros.* to develop in-cabin, immersive experiences in autonomous vehicle (AV) settings. Called the AV Entertainment Experience, we are creating a first-of-its-kind proof-of-concept car to demonstrate what entertainment in the vehicle could look like in the future. As a member of the Intel 100-car test fleet, the vehicle will showcase the potential for entertainment in an autonomous driving world.

Noctua today updated its range of ruggedised 24V industrialPPC fans. Using the novel NE-FD4 motor driver IC that complies with the Automotive Electronics Council's highly rigorous AEC-Q100 failure-mechanism-based stress test qualification, the new Q100 revision NF-F12 (120mm) and NF-A14 (140mm) models complement the industrialPPC line's signature rigidity and IP67 ingress protection with extreme electrical robustness and sophisticated inrush current suppression. This makes them ideal not only for automotive applications but also for use in hostile or sensitive electronic environments.

"With its highly rigid polyamide construction and IP67-class water and dust protection, the industrialPPC line has opened up a wealth of new industrial markets for us since its introduction in 2014," explains Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). "True to the industrialPPC's tagline of 'Protected Performance Cooling', we have now also toughened up these fans from an electronics point of view so that they are equally well protected against environmental and electrical hazards."

Tractors are some of the most beloved and benign pieces of automotive technology, and some of the very first applications of the internal combustion engine, after cars. Tinkering with the classic free-breathing (natural aspiration) engines of old tractors is something arguably every mechanical engineer has ever done. Over the ages however, tractors and other farm equipment have gotten increasingly complex. The engines became smaller (and hence more fuel-efficient), and technologies such as turbochargers and electronic fuel injection shored power and torque back up to the levels of larger free-breathing engines. Running the engine is now handled by a small embedded computer called the ECU (engine control unit). Likewise, running the various ancillaries on farming equipment such as harvesters have been governed by electronics. The more there's electronics, the less there is that a spanner can fix, and that has become a big problem in America.

Some popular farm equipment manufacturers such as John Deere have taken greed cleverly disguised as "quality assurance" to the same levels as the Apple iPhone. On the iPhone, you can't just install third-party software that hasn't been vetted by Apple and distributed through the App Store. Free software activists have criticized this for stiffing innovation, because Apple's software doesn't give users unrestricted access to the hardware that they've paid for. John Deere and some of its competitors are in the same league. They've outfitted their tractors and farm equipment with electronics that make it practically impossible to perform "unauthorized" repair. If your crop is up for harvest and your harvester is throwing a fit, you have no option but to take it back to a John Deere service center, or other repair shops "authorized" by the company. If you've replaced a part yourself, a guy with a laptop has to come over to your farm, and "activate" that part. American farmers aren't taking kindly to this, and help is coming from the most unlikely of places.

ARM processors have been making forays into hitherto shallow markets, with it's technology and processor architectures winning an ever increasing amount of design wins. Most recently, Microsoft itself announced a platform meant to use ARM processors in a server environment. Now, ARM has put forward its plans towards achieving a grand total of 100 billion chips shipped in the 2017-2021 time frame.

To put that goal in perspective, ARM is looking to ship as many ARM-powered processors in this 2017-2021 time frame as it did between 1991 and 2017. This is no easy task - at least if ARM were to stay in its known markets, where it has already achieved almost total saturation. The plan: to widen the appeal of its processor design, with big bets in the AI, Automotive, XR (which encompasses the Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality markets), leveraged by what ARM does best: hyper-efficient processors.

Intel and Mobileye announced on March 13 that they have entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which Intel will acquire Mobileye. Under the terms of the agreement, a subsidiary of Intel will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Mobileye for $63.54 per share in cash, representing a fully-diluted equity value of approximately $15.3 billion and an enterprise value of $14.7 billion.

The acquisition will couple the best-in-class technologies from both companies, including Intel's high-performance computing and connectivity expertise and Mobileye's leading computer vision expertise to create automated driving solutions from the cloud through the network to the car.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the availability of ultra reliable, ultra high-speed and ultra high-temperature parallel NOR Flash and low-power DDR4 (LPDDR4) DRAM to meet the increasing memory requirements for the automotive market segment. Micron's G18 NOR family offers the industry's highest-performance parallel NOR, while Micron's automotive-grade LPDDR4 solutions are an industry-first.

These new products meet the needs of automotive applications that require ultra high speed. The G18 family's high performance (266 MB/s)enables faster boot and code execution for higher-density applications, while LPDDR4 enables 33 percent higher peak bandwidth than DDR4. Additionally, Micron's new solutions deliver long-lasting reliability and meet ISO/TS certification requirements-with the G18 family enabling three times faster throughput over quad SPI NOR, and the LPDDR4 products undergoing additional package-level burn-in testing. Furthermore, Micron's G18 NOR products have options that meet the industrial temperature (IT) range of -40 to 85°C and the automotive-grade automotive temperature (AAT) range of -40 to 105°C. The LPDDR4 products have options that meet the automotive-grade industrial temperature (AIT) range of -40 to 95°C, as well as some future options that will meet the automotive-grade ultra temperature (AUT) range of -40C to 125°C, which is the highest operating temperature range in the industry, expected to be available in 2016.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND Flash storage solutions, announces its updated DuraDrive AT7 built for approved automotive In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI) systems.

The DuraDrive AT7 is Super Talent's latest industrial data storage solution that offers enhanced durability and high capacity. With the ability to withstand temperatures between -40°C to 85° paired with read speeds of up to 500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 400 MB/s, the AT7 is a powerhouse built to cover all your automotive needs, withstanding all elements of vibration and shock in the most mission critical of situations.

Intel Capital today announced a $100 million investment fund to help accelerate innovation and the adoption of new technology and services in the automotive industry. Intel Capital is the first global technology investment organization headquartered in Silicon Valley to announce a dedicated focus on automotive technology innovation.

The Intel Capital Connected Car Fund will be invested globally over the next 4 to 5 years in hardware, software and services companies developing technologies to promote new, compelling in-vehicle applications and enable the seamless connection between vehicles and any connected device, including mobile devices and sensors.