Hello,
In this issue, Murray brings us some interesting science (which I differentiate from engineering) from U Michigan where Lithium cells are claimed to be able to charge at a 6C rate at a temperature of −10°C, by utilizing atomic layer deposition (ALD) electrodes -- this enabled a >500% increase in accessible capacity and >97% capacity retention after 100 cycles without Li plating. ALD sounds a bit science fairish to me, but the school has spun out a commercialization startup which is a good start beyond the findings being mere publishing fodder.
Bill Wong brings us a gem (it's expensive at 16% of the price of a fictional EV for the poors, so...yeah) from the recent Hot Chips 2025 Conference - NVIDIA's DRIVE AGX Thor Developer Kit the for automotive applications, which provides automotive-grade hardware and a suite of SDKs and libraries targeting self-driving vehicles. Or, you could just spend your cash on one hundred hours of a chauffeur driving you around town at $35/hr, while you do your Princess Bride wave at the peasants.
Speaking of autonomous driving, James Morra gives us an overview of a custom-designed NXP-based computer that acts as the backseat driver for the main autonomous driving software stack in semi trucks. It ensures that if any key component of Kodiak Driver, Kodiak Robotics' AI-driven autonomous system, or the truck platform itself fails, the autonomous truck can still perform a safe fallback maneuver and come to a controlled stop.
We have a new series we've launched - "Now and Then" - where our editors take a look at a particular technology from decades ago, and how it's evolved or changed in recent times. This series features restored artifacts (articles) that our intrepid archaeologists have dug up from the strata of over 70 years of Electronic Design magazine.
Bill Wong kicks off the Now and Then series with a look at magnetic core memory...core stacks are where the FORTRAN program contents of my punched-card deck were stored in our university's IBM 360 mainframe computer during compilation and execution. 50kbits was literally 50,000 bitty donuts.
enjoy,
-andyT
