Showing posts with label BMW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BMW. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 April 2022
Car Manufacturers In Deals with Electronics Firms
As tech firms invest in semiconductor production to meet demand, automotive manufacturers are tying up with tech firms to secure supply. An example is BMW who signed a supply deal with Inova Semiconductors and Global Foundries in December 2021. Other companies have been ramping down production, with Ford closing factories in 2021. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) sales dropped 1.2% in 2021 attributed to the semiconductor shortage (order books remain healthy). Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said while production was on track, "day by day we're in close discussion with suppliers". Tesla has managed supply well, though has reportedly omitted electronic control units in steering racks for some models, according to CNBC. Porsche has been unusual in predicting record sales despite shortages.
Tuesday, 18 December 2018
Graphcore Gifted $200m in Series D Round
Bristol, UK based chipmaker Graphcore has received $200m in Series D funding from the likes of Microsoft and BMW (iVentures arm, based in Mountain View, San Francisco and Munich).
"Patient capital" provider, Sofina was also involved (whose current Chairman is Sir David Verey, CBE, ex Lazard). This investment values the company at $1.7bn. (Note that Sequoia invested $50m at Series C).
Founders are Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles.
Nigel has been CEO of two VC-backed companies before founding Graphcore, one of which was XMOS in which Graphcore was incubated prior to spin-out. Simon is co-founder and CTO, and has founded and exited two fabless semiconductor companies, Element14 and Icera for a combined value of $1bn. Prior to that he headed microprocessor design at ST Micro.
CNNs (convolutional) and RNNs (recurrent neural networks) are among the skills being hired for in their new round of expansion as well as knowledge of PyTorch and Horovod. Horovod uses MPI (Message Passing Interface) to distribute machine learning load across multiple GPUs.
RNNs have been used to analyze temporal dynamical behaviour such as handwriting recognition and speech recognition.
"Patient capital" provider, Sofina was also involved (whose current Chairman is Sir David Verey, CBE, ex Lazard). This investment values the company at $1.7bn. (Note that Sequoia invested $50m at Series C).
Founders are Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles.
Nigel has been CEO of two VC-backed companies before founding Graphcore, one of which was XMOS in which Graphcore was incubated prior to spin-out. Simon is co-founder and CTO, and has founded and exited two fabless semiconductor companies, Element14 and Icera for a combined value of $1bn. Prior to that he headed microprocessor design at ST Micro.
CNNs (convolutional) and RNNs (recurrent neural networks) are among the skills being hired for in their new round of expansion as well as knowledge of PyTorch and Horovod. Horovod uses MPI (Message Passing Interface) to distribute machine learning load across multiple GPUs.
RNNs have been used to analyze temporal dynamical behaviour such as handwriting recognition and speech recognition.
Wednesday, 5 September 2018
Auto-Ethernet Extravaganza - NXP Swallows OmniPHY
The world's largest supplier of automotive chips, NXP Semiconductors, has announced its acquisition of OmniPHY, a networking IP startup, for better bandwidth on its Ethernet solutions, for an undisclosed sum. This will complement NXP's existing products based on standards like CAN, LIN and FlexRay.
OmniPHY has been a regular on the conference trail showcasing its Automotive IP solutions and support for cars becoming "Servers on Wheels". The suffix PHY comes from the IEEE shortform for a physical layer communication protocol.
Alexander Tan is NXP's Vice President of Automotive Ethernet Solutions since May 2017, based in San Jose, California, and has Ethernet experience from Fairfield County-founded National Semiconductor (now acquired by Texas Instruments) and other firms.
CAN standard (Controller Area Network) is a vehicle bus standard that allows microcontrollers to communicate, via a message-based protocol, in applications without a host computer. Development on the CAN bus started in 1983 at Bosch, with the first chips produced by Intel and Philips. The first production vehicle to employ this technology was the Mercedes-Benz W140 in 1991.
LIN (Local Interconnect Network) is a cheaper to implement version of CAN. It was created in the 1990s by the LIN Consortium founded by five automakers (BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz).
OmniPHY has been a regular on the conference trail showcasing its Automotive IP solutions and support for cars becoming "Servers on Wheels". The suffix PHY comes from the IEEE shortform for a physical layer communication protocol.
Alexander Tan is NXP's Vice President of Automotive Ethernet Solutions since May 2017, based in San Jose, California, and has Ethernet experience from Fairfield County-founded National Semiconductor (now acquired by Texas Instruments) and other firms.
CAN standard (Controller Area Network) is a vehicle bus standard that allows microcontrollers to communicate, via a message-based protocol, in applications without a host computer. Development on the CAN bus started in 1983 at Bosch, with the first chips produced by Intel and Philips. The first production vehicle to employ this technology was the Mercedes-Benz W140 in 1991.
LIN (Local Interconnect Network) is a cheaper to implement version of CAN. It was created in the 1990s by the LIN Consortium founded by five automakers (BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz).
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