AI attacks, automotive falls in top ten article in June
The top ten articles on eeNews Europe in June covered the latest AI attacks to two automotive suppliers filing for bankruptcy protection and the end of an era at ARM.
As with any tool, AI can be used for good and evil. Researchers have highlighted how generative AI can be used to recreate captured voice commands from the MEMS microphones smart speakers and PCs, even through thick concrete walls. Suppliers have pointed out that the devices are older, and it is the design of the systems with long wires acting as antennas that needs to be considered.
At the other end of the scale, generative AI is also being used to speed up the creation of hardware prototypes, from the software to the board layout.
After a landmark deal signed in 2024, the first wireless modules from STMicroelectronics using IP from Qualcomm have been launched, with Siana Systems as the lead customer. This simplifies the connection to STM32 microcontrollers to speed up the development of devices across the Internet of Things (IoT).
First ST/Qualcomm Bluetooth/Wi-Fi module enters mass production
The big deal of the month was the $120m purchase of Memfault by Nordic Semiconductor. This brings the agent-based IoT monitoring software into the vertical stack at Nordic, and strengthens its position as a global technology supplier based in Europe, but casts doubt over the other chip suppliers that use the technology such as ST and Infineon and many others.
This leaves Percepio in Sweden as the leading independent supplier of agent-based IoT software, which will be interesting going forward.
Plenty has been happening in the quantum world during the month, from the billion dollar deal by IonQ to acquire Oxford Ionics, to quantum sensing at Zero Point Motion.
But it is the CUDA-Q library boost for GPUs that was of most interest, providing a dramatic increase in performance for hybrid systems.
Wolfspeed and Marelli continue to struggle with the automotive downturn. Both have now filed for protection from bankruptcy as they restructure, with Wolfspeed set to be largely owned by Renesas Electronics.
Engineers are increasingly interested in which AI accelerators they can add to their systems, and June was no exception with the latest AI accelerator now available on the Raspberry Pi 5. This joins accelerators from Hailo and DeepX, giving developers a wider range of choice and a significant performance boost for both vision AI and generative AI models.
AI accelerator brings low-power Generative AI to Raspberry Pi 5
It is always sad to see the retirement of a well know brand, not least with getting to grips with the new names. ARM is phasing out the use of the Cortex brand for its chips, adding in sector specific branding. We already know of the Neoverse chips for infrastructure, but Cortex-X is set to migrate to Niva for the PC and Lumex for mobile, both of which will be key for Mediatek. We have already seen the first Zena sub-system for AI-defined vehicles, using the A720AE cores, and Orbis will be the brand across a wide range of processors and microcontrollers for the IoT chips.
Farewell Cortex as ARM looks to product rebranding and China risks
Back to the AI accelerators, and it was the DeepX deal with Wind River that caught the most attention in the top ten articles in June. Even after 38 years, the VxWorks real time operating remains a powerful tool for the IoT and embedded infrastructure, and combining this and the Helix software platform with the latest DeepX system on module and migrating to the 2nm version for even higher performance in the same 5W power envelope gives engineers plenty of room for development.
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