Unwillingly to campaign
Swan has been Intel’s Chief Financial Officer since October 2016. He is responsible for Intel Global Finance, IT and corporate strategy. Prior to that, he was CFO of eBay Inc., and served as Electronic Data Systems Corp. And CFO of TRW Inc. He also served as CEO of Webvan Group Inc.
Swan's resume looks 'qualified' and he also stated that Intel’s transition to a data-centric company is proceeding smoothly and expects Intel to continue to win the market. However, according to a person familiar with the matter, Swan’s The staff meeting said that he does not want to be permanently in this position.
And Swan's election to withdraw from his CEO position will further limit the internal selection of Intel's board of directors. During the past 50 years of development, the company has consistently promoted leaders from within. According to foreign media reports, the Intel board has a sound Succession planning process, and has begun looking for a permanent CEO, including candidates from both internal and external companies. The board of directors cooperates with a leading executive search firm to assist this process.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Intel’s founding. In the age of “knowing the destiny”, how does this change affect Intel in the end? Rob Enderle, chief analyst of Enderle Group Inc., accepts Silicon Valley Business Journal The interview said, 'I think this is the last straw that crushed the camel.'
Strategy 'go'?
Perhaps the most noteworthy point is whether Intel’s strategy for data supremacy is sustainable and where it will go?
Former CEO Ke Zaiqi led Intel for 5 years, and the strategy was adjusted several times. The final decision was 'data-centric'. The overall performance was steadily rising. After several consecutive mergers and acquisitions, Intel's border tension was opening up. In the 5 years of the CEO's, Intel's share price has risen by 120%. It has increased by 54% in the past year and has risen by 16% in the past 6 months.
Intel made a good start in the first half of this year, and it is expected that 2018 will be another record year. Although there is a good start, there are all indications that the giant Intel has already suffered from the enemy and needs urgent measures in strategy and management.
Under the blessings of big data, cloud computing, Internet of things, and AI, the entire chip industry has undergone a series of changes: With AI technology represented by deep learning becoming mainstream, CPUs occupying the market for several decades are impacted; the cost is lower. FPGAs, GPUs that can process data faster, have come to market with new architecture-specific processors competing for the market.
Moreover, Intel’s disapproval of Nvidia has suddenly become Intel’s biggest rival. Former old rivals AMD and Qualcomm are also stepping up their preparations and spending huge amounts of money to acquire FPGAs, how Nervana, Movidius, and Mobileye’s integration will be released, and whether the latest process technology yield is high. Has reached the standard? Inside and outside under the ring, no matter whether it is 'Schematic regulations with Cao', or stand another hill, Intel's future is unspeakable.
2. Samsung CMOS sensor zoom, ISOCELL Plus for smart phones to create more powerful camera performance
With the micro-network message, the level of photography has become the focus of competition for all smart phone brands in the eyes of smartphone technology encountering innovation bottlenecks. The level of CMOS image sensors is directly related to the quality of shooting. In this market, according to market research organization TSR latest data Shows that in 2017, Sony topped the championship with a market share of 31.5%, Samsung followed the 30.3% market share. Samsung is rapidly catching up with Sony's leading position, and there are approximately 200 million mobile phones on the mainland in 2017. The ISOCELL image sensor technology that was launched in the same year, for example, with the shipment of 460 million smart phones in mainland China in 2017, the mainland market share is close to half.
According to Ben K. Hur, vice president of marketing for Samsung Electronics System LSI, CMOS image sensors are an important part of Samsung's System LSI business. For the first time at the Shanghai World Mobile Conference (MWCS) last year, With ISOCELL technology, this year's MWCS brings an upgraded version of this technology, the new ISOCELL Plus technology. The application of this technology enhances the ability of CMOS image sensors to capture light, greatly improving the photosensitivity and color reproduction. Today, intelligence Users of mobile phones can shoot more accurate and clear photos in challenging low light conditions.
In order to produce high-quality photos, CMOS image sensors need to capture as much light as possible and accurately transmit color information to photodiodes. In 2013, Samsung solved the related requirements by introducing ISOCELL technology. The technology is adjacent A physical barrier is formed between the pixels to accommodate more light, reducing color crosstalk and increasing full-well capacity. Compared to traditional back-illuminated (BSI) image sensor designs, ISOCELL technology allows each pixel to absorb And store more light to get better image quality.
With the introduction of the ISOCELL Plus pixel isolation technology, Samsung is pushing pixel isolation technology to a new level with further optimized pixel structures. In existing pixel structures, metal plates are usually formed on photodiodes to reduce the number of pixels. Interference, but because metals tend to reflect or absorb incident light, it also causes light loss. With ISOCELL Plus, Samsung replaced the metal on the photodiode with innovative materials developed by Fujifilm Co., Ltd. (Fujifilm). Mesh, which minimizes light loss and light reflection, achieves higher color reproduction while increasing sensitivity by 15%.
It is also known that the technology enables the image sensor to be equipped with 0.8 micron (μm) or smaller pixels without any loss of performance, making it the best solution for cameras with resolutions higher than 20 megapixels.
Naoto Yanagihara, Minister of Research and Development of Fujifilm, commented: 'This development is an important milestone for us. It marks the first commercialization of our new materials. Through continuous cooperation with Samsung, we look forward to more in the field of mobile cameras. Meaningful innovation. ' 3. Support 3GPP R14! MediaTek and Ericsson accelerate the construction of NB-IoT equipment ecosystem
Jiwei.com, June 27th, today, MediaTek and Ericsson announced cooperation to jointly expand the commercial eco-cooperation system of NB-IoT terminals. Prior to this, both parties have targeted Unicom NB-IoT system single chip (SoC The platform is tested and validated for several months with Ericsson's large-scale IoT network infrastructure.
At the Ericsson booth at the 2018 Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Ericsson and MediaTek jointly demonstrated the end-to-end integration of NB-IoT use cases and 3GPP Release 13-based commercial terminals, including intelligent NB-IoT locks that provide security. , NB-IoT-based wearable health bracelet and child safety watch.
The two companies also plan to further cooperate to jointly test the new features or technical enhancements of NB-IoT to create a low-power wide-area Internet of Things (LPWA) terminal ecosystem based on 3GPP Release 14.
Yu Renjie, deputy general manager of MediaTek and general manager of the intelligent equipment business group, said: 'Ericsson is a pioneer in the field of mobile communication networks and a global leader in mobile network infrastructure. We are working hard to deploy and validate NB-IoT SoC solutions, This cooperation will help us accelerate the commercialization of new features and push it quickly to the rapidly growing Internet of Things market.
Luca Orsini, director of network products for Ericsson Northeast Asia, said: 'Since 3G, Ericsson and MediaTek have been maintaining close cooperation on the development of an ecosystem of ecosystems. Now we are expanding our scope of cooperation to the Internet of Things to use MediaTek for the world. An in-depth understanding of the brand and terminal manufacturers, integrating new low-power NB-IoT capabilities into the terminal. When we explore new ways to connect users and expand the potential of the Internet of Things, this collaboration helps us fulfill our commitment to provide Global large-scale IoT solutions that support new features and promote stakeholder building new IoT use cases and applications.
After the end-to-end test of the 3GPP Release 13-based use cases and the compatibility verification of the Release 14 function, Ericsson's customers will be able to use the multi-products of MediaTek's NB-IoT chip, such as shared bicycles, fitness tracking. Terminals, networkable wearable devices, smart door locks and smart meters provide a wide range of services.
Similarly, MediaTek customers can rely on leading IoT networking technology for best-in-class end-to-end compatibility to support the exciting 3GPP R14 – NB-IoT capability that delivers higher throughput and capacity and supports a wide range of use cases.
Welcome to the Ericsson booth (N3 Pavilion) of Shanghai World Mobile Communications Conference. Watch the live network use demonstration of this technology.
4. Qualcomm released Snapon 632, 439, 429 chips in MWC Shanghai
Following the launch of Xiaolong 710 last month by Qualcomm, Qualcomm today launched three new Xiaolong family chips at MWC Shanghai, namely Xiaolong 632, Xiaolong 439 and Xiaolong 429. It is understood that Xiaolong 600 Series and Xiaolong 400 The series are designed for low-end and mid-range mobile devices.
According to Qualcomm, Qualcomm Xiaolong 600 series and 400 series are currently equipped with more than 3,600 different mobile devices worldwide. Qualcomm believes that the newly released three processors will help differentiate them from the mid to high-end mobile phone market. The processor had all kinds of news before, but no one started.
It is understood that Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 processor is mainly focused on 4K video capture, performance is in the middle reaches of the level, while the price is also in the mid-range. Snapdragon 632 is an eight-core processor, consisting of four large cores and four small cores. Compared to Xiaolong 626, Xiaolong 632 has a 40% increase in performance. At the same time, Xiaolong 632 adopts Adreno 506 GPU. Compared to Xiaolong 626, its performance is improved by 10%. Adreno 560 supports single-pixel 24 megapixel camera or 13 megapixel dual camera At the same time Adreno 506 also supports wide-angle shooting and real-time bokeh.
The other two processors, the Snapdragon 439 and Snapdragon 429, are defined as entry-level products. Although the two chips are not as feature rich as the Snapdragon 632, the overall performance is still very balanced. The Snapdragon 429 is a little better. It is an eight-core processor with an Adreno 505 GPU. The Snapdragon 429 is still a quad-core processor. The Snapdragon 439 is compared to the previous Snapdragon 430 and Snapdragon 425. Performance increased by 25%, while also supporting a single 21 million pixel camera or 8 million pixel dual camera, support for FHD + display.
However, Qualcomm did not indicate whether the three cameras supported fingerprint sensors, VoLTE, or artificial intelligence technologies like the Xiaolong 710, but Qualcomm said that the devices equipped with these three processors will be produced in the second half of this year as soon as possible. Family
5. Develop a self-driving car. What kind of tools do we need?
What are the biggest problems that auto-driving car development now encounters when it comes to micro-network messages (Text/Aki)? Different fields can give different opinions.
As a new thing, self-driving cars are not only involved in many latest technologies compared to traditional cars, but even in software development, they are even more than applications such as drones or aerospace aircraft. The problems it needs to deal with are also more complicated.
As the first step in the design of self-driving cars, simulation has played a crucial role in simplifying the design process, shortening the design time, and verifying the design results.
However, like other autonomous vehicles, the simulation also faces many problems in the development and testing process. For example, how to design the autonomous car to best guarantee its reliability can be obtained in the simulation stage. The solution.
Accelerating the resolution of this type of problem is a problem that MathWorks highlighted at this year's MathWorks China Automotive Annual Conference.
Two digital changes in car development
The development of autonomous vehicles is, to a certain extent, a process in the digitalization of traditional automobile development. It is the only way for digitalization, and it is also the inevitable result.
According to Lin Xiaoxuan, director of product development for the MathWorks Embedded Coder product line, this result is not an overnight one. From a development point of view, there are at least two steps.
The first step, which was also the first digital revolution, was the infiltration of embedded software everywhere in the development of traditional cars. Remember that once old cars had no airbags, no ABS, no music, and only cars. The most primitive function, driving, its development process is relatively simple.
With the addition of more and more functions, the application of embedded software is imperative. On the basis of driving, vehicle development begins to consider the fuel economy and emissions, electrification and vehicle safety, comfort and convenience, etc. Various problems.
With so many problems urgently needed to be solved, naturally it is impossible to wait until prototype production to find problems and solve problems. Starting from model design, we can design cars that are advancing with the times faster.
'At this time, the car's model design generally goes through three steps of modeling and simulation, testing and verification, and code generation.'
The second digital change is that with the advent of self-driving cars, artificial intelligence has become ubiquitous.
Lin Xiaoxi emphasized: 'Data-driven algorithms, machine learning and deep learning, and autonomous systems have gone deep into the system modules of positioning, planning, control, and sensing of self-driving cars. They have also made the simulation tools needed for autonomous vehicles more complicated. '
One of the problems with increased complexity of tools is that the difficulty of getting started increases at a geometric multiple. Since the fields and technologies involved in autonomous driving are varied, they are divided into categories. The knowledge that requires developers to understand must be all-encompassing, even to the point where everyone knows everything. For developers, the requirements can be said to be sensational.
However, after all, there is specialization in the medical industry. Developers are proficient in a certain field. They are not necessarily specialized programmers. They do not necessarily have very rich knowledge and background in other fields. However, because of the needs of products, they have to rely on computer programs. To deal with tasks that have never been fully understood, how to better and solve these problems faster? Lin Xiaoyun believes that at this time, what developers need most is a modular, highly integrated tool that can complement developers' shortcomings.
What tools can complement the developer's short board?
It can be said that the model-based design has been widely applied to the development of all walks of life, not only in the development of self-driving cars.
The advantage of this design is that for developers, it is possible to quickly apply knowledge from other fields without too much knowledge, which speeds up the design and simplifies the design process. Therefore, more and more In the development process, model-based design plays a key role in today's highly autonomous system.
Lin Xiaoyu said that MathWorks hopes to provide developers with a series of design and verification tools by introducing new tools to quickly develop artificial intelligence algorithms and simplify the verification of autonomous vehicle algorithms.
To this end, in 2017, MathWorks introduced the Autopilot System Toolbox (ADST), which is expected to provide engineers with autonomous drive and active safety system development with a range of tools to accelerate the development of automated driving systems and active safety systems.
It is understood that this tool mainly includes three aspects:
First, test and verification tools, including real value tags and scene generation;
Second, algorithm development tools, including sensor fusion and target tracking, and vision system design tools;
Third, visualization tools, including aerial tools, and radar point cloud tools.
As we all know, self-driving cars expand the concept of the environment more broadly, including weather, traffic, road conditions, etc. ADAS, smart cars include a large number of environmental sensors, including cameras and radars with various functions such as ultrasonic radar, millimeter waves Radar, Lidar. These all pose great challenges to modeling and simulation techniques.
MathWorks provides a complete modeling tool and method for the application of the above functions. Scene conditions, sensor fusion, control algorithms, actuators, these four parts are a complete smart driving simulation architecture, this tool can be addressed one by one.
It is understood that in the field of core algorithm development software tools, MathWorks almost occupies a monopoly position in the global market. Mobileye, Delphi and others have adopted their software tools for the development of cameras, millimeter-wave radar, laser radar and other modules. And almost all OEMs implement , Control module development also uses its products.
In addition, Lin Xiaoyan also emphasized that at each stage of model-based design and development, MathWorks has different toolboxes supporting rapid, efficient, and high-quality completion of corresponding development work, and a professional training team to provide standardized and customized training courses.
'For developers, how to design faster and better is the most important thing. Among them, a suitable tool plays a very important role, and it is also true for self-driving car development.' Lin Xiaoyun said finally, 'As a new thing, self-driving cars will encounter problems that have not been encountered before in the development. We are very willing to cooperate with more manufacturers to gradually solve the problems in the autopilot system. To make a truly accelerated design, even A tool that complements the developer's short board! '(Proofreading/Aki)
6.SA standard released Telecom equipment/chip vendors sprint 5G new business opportunities
The 5G industry has entered a completely new phase of sprint. 3GPP officially released the 5G NR independent network (SA) design proposal, together with the non-independent network (NSA) design plan released at the end of 2017, the first phase of 5G. Full-featured standardization work has been completed, which means that 5G commercialization will be fully accelerated, and Ericsson, Skyworks and other companies will also step up their deployment and sprint new business opportunities for 5G SA.
In order to preemptively deploy 5G SA business opportunities, Ericsson and Intel (Intel) cooperated with China Mobile Research Institute and China Mobile Jiangsu Branch to demonstrate the first multi-vendor interoperability test for wireless interfaces conforming to the 5G SA standard. Ericsson pointed out that 3GPP R15 5G NR The SA standard provides user planes and control planes based on the 5G Next Generation Core Network (NGC), and the 5G NR NSA and SA design schemes share the same entity standard. Therefore, this interoperability test is a 5G NR independent networking standard. An important milestone towards commercial use.
The three parties involved in the cooperation took the lead in launching the 5G NR Interoperability Development Test (IoDT) in accordance with the 3GPP SA standard at Ericsson Beijing Laboratory. The test uses the 3.5GHz band with a bandwidth of 100MHz and completes multi-vendor data transmission. The test system adopts Ericsson 5G NR base station and Intel 5G Mobile Trial Platform (5G MTP) prototype.
Asha Keddy, Intel's vice president and general manager of standards and next-generation technology, said that Intel and Ericsson, China Mobile continue to cooperate, have achieved 5G NR independent networking multi-vendor interoperability testing in compliance with 3GPP standards, which will help the industry 5G NR independent network deployment.
On the other hand, RF module supplier Skyworks also actively attacked 5G business opportunities. The company launched Sky5 integrated platform products earlier this year, including high-performance transmit/receive front-end solutions and DRx modules, specifically supporting 5G wireless below 6GHz. Communications; and recently Skyworks has also collaborated with National Instruments (NI) to demonstrate the company's 5G NR equipment at the GTI Summit in Shanghai, China.
After the release of the 5G SA standard, it is estimated that the 5G NR network will be deployed in the 3.3~5GHz spectrum, and the innovation speed of the RF front-end architecture will be greatly improved. Kevin Walsh, senior manager of Skyworks mobile marketing, said that consumers are enhanced. The need for mobile broadband technology must be met with a new 5G NR design. The new design can support larger bandwidths and new frequency bands, and maintain the power consumption of mobile devices within an appropriate range. To meet the initial 5G below 6GHz NR demand, Skyworks develops a complete solution with bandwidth up to 200 MHz and supports mobile architecture. New Electronics