“All the major customers enter the automotive industry”

13 June, 2016

Jeff Hutton, Sr. Director, Automotive Business Development at Synopsys believes that cars are the next “big thing” in electronics. “It is no coincidence that people with electronics background take management positions in automotive manufacturers”

Jeff Hutton, Sr. Director, Automotive Business Development at Synopsys believes that cars are the next “big thing” in electronics. “It is no coincidence that people with electronics background take management positions in automotive manufacturers”

SYNOPSYS-HUTTON
Jeff Hutton, Sr. Director, Automotive Business Development at Synopsys

Last week Techtime met with Synopsys Sr. Director of Automotive Business Development, Jeff Hutton. Hutton attended the SNUG Israel 2016 convention. This was a great opportunity to hear how the autonomous car revolution look like from behind the steering wheel of a major Electronics Design Automation company, and it seems it does look like the next big thing.

“One of the reason that make the autonomous car revolution so big, is the fact that all the technologies involved are very advanced” said Hutton. “For example, we are currently working on 7 nanometer FinFET components. We assist companies to conduct a simulation of the processes taking place inside these miniscule components, in order to ensure that wafers can leave the FAB. These wafers are to be integrated into motorized systems comprised of more than one billion transistors.”

From an EDA point of view, why automotive industry is unique?

“The automotive industry has special development and production process documentation requirements, as well as meticulous examination and handling of chip malfunctions. Many of the chips integrated into automotive products are part of critical applications, and as such must be safe. We have to assist the companies to test the chips behavior, down to the single transistor resolution. When you have millions of logical gates – you get millions of possible system malfunctions. A typical ADAS system today contains more than 100 million gates – managing faults is one of the issues differentiates a smartphone chip from automotive chip.”

What is the scope of the industry’s entry into the field?

“Of our 40 leading customers, I would have to say that almost either developing, or planning to develop smart car solutions. The trend is noticeable also on the opposite direction: the automotive industry is very traditional mechanical and machinery oriented one. Today we start to see that people from the fields of electronics are starting to pop up in higher management at automotive companies and their main subsidiaries (Tier 1). The auto industry begin to understand that electronics will become the main differentiating factor between car models, not mechanics.”

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Synopsys ARC EM processor

Do you have special products for the autonomous driving?

“We have built a designs IP library. These designs conform to the ISO26262 Road vehicles – Functional safety standard. For example, we developed a specialized autonomous car applications version of our ARC EM processor. The processor includes a specialized safety enhancement hardware package, conforming to ISO26262.”

What is your impression about the Israeli presence in the automotive sector?

“We receive many questions from Israel – many of our customers have R&D centers here, and there are a lot of local startups. I would say that Israeli companies are flocking the automotive field.”

 

 

 

 

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