Author Topic: AMD acquires Xilinx  (Read 6490 times)

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Offline peter-h

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #25 on: April 13, 2021, 12:00:51 pm »
I used to do FPGA designs and did a bit of that and ASIC design consultancy in the 1990s, and wondered just how far FPGAs can go before they become really marginal.

They were great when CPUs were slow (4MHz) and I used the X2000 and X3000 families effectively. But the tools (Viewlogic 4 and XACT5) were horrible, not generally backwards compatible, the company was arrogant about that (the salesman said "got to crack some eggs to make omelletes") so I had to archive the old tools (nowadays you could probably use VMWARE), had to get cracks for their dongles (if they broke they left you hanging, and I had two of them concurrently, and I doubt they would run under VMWARE).

Today you get a $7 ARM which runs at 168MHz and every one of the designs I did back then could be done as a state machine from an interrupt running at say 10-100kHz. And that's without doing anything clever.

I was really glad to get out of the FPGA business ~ 20 years ago. Since then I have seen their capacities go sky high, so big that nobody can design anything in them unless they either drop in large blocks (called "IP" these days), drop in RAM arrays, drop in a 128 bit barrel shifter :) or is a wizard in a hardware description language (VHDL was used way back). And their prices went sky-high. Well, they were always high - except for the bottom-end devices. The bigger X4000 devices were £100+ and thus with very limited applications.

The remaining obvious applications were things like a 20 channel ARINC429 + 1553 interface card (with FIFOs etc) which would cost a fortune if built with chips from the likes of HOLTEK, and with an FPGA it costs a smaller fortune :) And crypto (RSA and such) and packet routing for high speed links. These applications will always exist but the volumes aren't going to be great.


« Last Edit: April 13, 2021, 12:14:21 pm by peter-h »
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #26 on: April 13, 2021, 12:54:59 pm »
The cost of making ASICs using a modern process is high enough that the volume would have to be really large and/or the gate count very high to justify going that route instead of FPGAs. As an example, some very early Japanese market Prius used FPGAs (likely sharing many design elements with the RAV4 EV at the time), then they switched to ASICs since there was a huge cost savings. But lately, they're going back to FPGAs for their hybrid and fuel cell vehicles instead of designing new ASICs since modern FPGAs are a lot cheaper so going to ASICs would not save much.
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Offline peter-h

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #27 on: April 13, 2021, 01:26:01 pm »
Sure, but how much does a car cost?

The 4 digit product market is not enough to support a company of Xilinx's size into the future.

FPGAs have been widely used for ASIC prototyping and then the device cost is totally irrelevant, but it is a very small % of the FPGA market.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2021, 01:28:36 pm by peter-h »
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Online langwadt

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #28 on: April 13, 2021, 01:27:26 pm »
The cost of making ASICs using a modern process is high enough that the volume would have to be really large and/or the gate count very high to justify going that route instead of FPGAs. As an example, some very early Japanese market Prius used FPGAs (likely sharing many design elements with the RAV4 EV at the time), then they switched to ASICs since there was a huge cost savings. But lately, they're going back to FPGAs for their hybrid and fuel cell vehicles instead of designing new ASICs since modern FPGAs are a lot cheaper so going to ASICs would not save much.

afaik cellphone basestations was (is?) a huge market for FPGAs
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #29 on: April 13, 2021, 02:01:01 pm »
The cost of making ASICs using a modern process is high enough that the volume would have to be really large and/or the gate count very high to justify going that route instead of FPGAs. As an example, some very early Japanese market Prius used FPGAs (likely sharing many design elements with the RAV4 EV at the time), then they switched to ASICs since there was a huge cost savings. But lately, they're going back to FPGAs for their hybrid and fuel cell vehicles instead of designing new ASICs since modern FPGAs are a lot cheaper so going to ASICs would not save much.

I'm curious as to what in an EV requires an FPGA rather than an MCU or DSP?  The calculations are not so intense or high speed.  I am a big proponent of using FPGAs for such control applications, but most of the community does not agree with me.  Where did you read about this?


Quote
afaik cellphone basestations was (is?) a huge market for FPGAs

Yes, in fact, comms in general are the big driver for the large FPGAs especially.  You gotta wonder what anyone is doing with 8 million LUTs, but they make it because they can sell it.
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Offline Bassman59

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #30 on: April 13, 2021, 03:46:57 pm »
The cost of making ASICs using a modern process is high enough that the volume would have to be really large and/or the gate count very high to justify going that route instead of FPGAs. As an example, some very early Japanese market Prius used FPGAs (likely sharing many design elements with the RAV4 EV at the time), then they switched to ASICs since there was a huge cost savings. But lately, they're going back to FPGAs for their hybrid and fuel cell vehicles instead of designing new ASICs since modern FPGAs are a lot cheaper so going to ASICs would not save much.

I'm curious as to what in an EV requires an FPGA rather than an MCU or DSP?  The calculations are not so intense or high speed.  I am a big proponent of using FPGAs for such control applications, but most of the community does not agree with me.  Where did you read about this?

I have no way of knowing whether NiHaoMike's assertions are correct, but the one thing the FPGA gives over an MCU or DSP is flexibility. How many SPI peripherals do you need? The MCU has a limit. Maybe 8 on that NXP LPC55 thing with its FLEXCOMMs. In an FPGA? How many pins ya got?

It may very well be that those FPGAs in the car have an embedded processor doing processor-type stuff and they add on the exact peripherals needed.
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #31 on: April 13, 2021, 04:49:59 pm »
I'm curious as to what in an EV requires an FPGA rather than an MCU or DSP?  The calculations are not so intense or high speed.  I am a big proponent of using FPGAs for such control applications, but most of the community does not agree with me.  Where did you read about this?

I have no way of knowing whether NiHaoMike's assertions are correct, but the one thing the FPGA gives over an MCU or DSP is flexibility. How many SPI peripherals do you need? The MCU has a limit. Maybe 8 on that NXP LPC55 thing with its FLEXCOMMs. In an FPGA? How many pins ya got?

It may very well be that those FPGAs in the car have an embedded processor doing processor-type stuff and they add on the exact peripherals needed.

That's my point.  There is no use in idle speculation.  We might as well imagine they are designing with 7400 TTL or hand wired transistors.  I saw a computer built from transistors in high school.  Our electronics class was given one from the weather service.  A FF was a small board.  Our instructor showed us the soldering and pointed out that flaws we could not see would flunk it for military or space applications.  I believe it used a magnetic drum for main memory.  Much of the circuitry was likely just for timing the memory accesses. 

A car could do something similar since it has so many rotating parts.  lol  See where speculation gets us?
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Online Wolfram

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #32 on: April 13, 2021, 05:24:08 pm »
The cost of making ASICs using a modern process is high enough that the volume would have to be really large and/or the gate count very high to justify going that route instead of FPGAs. As an example, some very early Japanese market Prius used FPGAs (likely sharing many design elements with the RAV4 EV at the time), then they switched to ASICs since there was a huge cost savings. But lately, they're going back to FPGAs for their hybrid and fuel cell vehicles instead of designing new ASICs since modern FPGAs are a lot cheaper so going to ASICs would not save much.

I'm curious as to what in an EV requires an FPGA rather than an MCU or DSP?  The calculations are not so intense or high speed.  I am a big proponent of using FPGAs for such control applications, but most of the community does not agree with me.  Where did you read about this?


I can only speculate on the justification, but Tesla drive units I've taken apart have used FPGAs as part of the motor control. The big rear drive unit in the Model S uses an Actel/Microsemi ProASIC3 for example, along with a couple of TI motor control DSPs.
 

Offline peter-h

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #33 on: April 13, 2021, 09:22:36 pm »
Most motor control today is 3 phase brushless stuff and most of it is done with fairly fast CPUs e.g. ARM32F. These have 1-2us conversion time 12-bit ADCs, 12 bit DACs, and are easily capable of doing this job to any level of sophistication.

The problem is that designers like job security and there is nothing better than an FPGA for that. Nobody can do anything with it once the original designer is gone :)
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Offline filssavi

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #34 on: April 13, 2021, 09:50:27 pm »
Most motor control today is 3 phase brushless stuff and most of it is done with fairly fast CPUs e.g. ARM32F. These have 1-2us conversion time 12-bit ADCs, 12 bit DACs, and are easily capable of doing this job to any level of sophistication.

The problem is that designers like job security and there is nothing better than an FPGA for that. Nobody can do anything with it once the original designer is gone :)

That is as long as you are unsina a VSI inverter with standard modulation, or maybe a diode clamped NPC (if you chose the correct MCU) anything more than that and the PWM modulators/timers will not be sufficient anymore
Than you are forced to go to an FPGA  just to have enough of the right kind of PWM channels ( most STM32 while more than capable enough from a computational power perspective have only 1 “advanced” timer that does deadtime, complementary outputs etc.

 

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #35 on: April 13, 2021, 09:51:52 pm »
Most motor control today is 3 phase brushless stuff and most of it is done with fairly fast CPUs e.g. ARM32F. These have 1-2us conversion time 12-bit ADCs, 12 bit DACs, and are easily capable of doing this job to any level of sophistication.

The problem is that designers like job security and there is nothing better than an FPGA for that. Nobody can do anything with it once the original designer is gone :)

when you have 400V and 1000A it makes sense to have some hardware as a last defense against the software doing something silly
 

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #36 on: April 13, 2021, 10:09:28 pm »
Most motor control today is 3 phase brushless stuff and most of it is done with fairly fast CPUs e.g. ARM32F. These have 1-2us conversion time 12-bit ADCs, 12 bit DACs, and are easily capable of doing this job to any level of sophistication.

The problem is that designers like job security and there is nothing better than an FPGA for that. Nobody can do anything with it once the original designer is gone :)

That is as long as you are unsina a VSI inverter with standard modulation, or maybe a diode clamped NPC (if you chose the correct MCU) anything more than that and the PWM modulators/timers will not be sufficient anymore
Than you are forced to go to an FPGA  just to have enough of the right kind of PWM channels ( most STM32 while more than capable enough from a computational power perspective have only 1 “advanced” timer that does deadtime, complementary outputs etc.

doesn't most if not all F4/F7 have two advanced timers?

 

Offline filssavi

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #37 on: April 14, 2021, 05:02:43 am »
Quote from: langwadt link=topic=276122.msg3548688#msg3548688
doesn't most if not all F4/F7 have two advanced timers?

I am pretty sure ( not 1000% though) that only selected parts in the F0 F3/G4 and H7 lines have the motor control timers  (no F4) the top of the line G4 has 3 advanced timers, that is 18 pwm and 12 additional from the HR timer  that is 30 PWMs
That is however no many in the big schema of thing, a colleague of mine was working on a system where the controller was responsible for. 4 NPC converters and that is 48 PWM right there.

Also the total determinism of FPGAs and CPLDs is very handy in making sure that nothing blows up for unexpected reasons.
And it makes safety certifications such as SIL much easier.

All in all it comes down to the fact that even a 100€ FPGA is not that expensive of a BOM item in a converter the size of a small room where you are paying multiple hundreds of dollars (or even thousands) in capacitor alone
 

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #38 on: April 14, 2021, 09:25:35 am »
Quote from: langwadt link=topic=276122.msg3548688#msg3548688
doesn't most if not all F4/F7 have two advanced timers?

I am pretty sure ( not 1000% though) that only selected parts in the F0 F3/G4 and H7 lines have the motor control timers  (no F4)

I've mostly used the F407 it has two advanced timers with complemenetary outputs and programmable dead time
 

Offline peter-h

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #39 on: April 15, 2021, 06:28:02 am »
I can tell you that "total determinism of FPGAs" is fiction :)

It is close, if designed correctly, paying lots of attention to sync clocking etc, but it is easy to generate a design which is temperature-marginal, metastable, etc.

There is no fundamental difference between complex logic in hardware, and software. There are just different ways to screw up :)

FPGAs are ever so tempting for many projects because you can go for a "direct solution" whereas with software you often have to use imagination (clever use of timers, etc). But you pay for that dead-end development route afterwards, with dead-end tools which go unsupported after a year or two, and a project nobody can pick up.

I don't know what the current Xilinx tool licensing is (it isn't dongles anymore) but if they use FlexLM that is a nightmare.
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #40 on: April 15, 2021, 06:53:50 am »
I can tell you that "total determinism of FPGAs" is fiction :)

It is close, if designed correctly, paying lots of attention to sync clocking etc, but it is easy to generate a design which is temperature-marginal, metastable, etc.

There is no fundamental difference between complex logic in hardware, and software. There are just different ways to screw up :)

Maybe you have been smoking a bit too much of the wacky weed?  I literally have no idea what you are talking about.  Metastability is so easy to avoid.  In fact, it is often not even a problem to begin with unless your design is running close to the limit of the FPGA delays on the path of interest.

i don't know what you are talking about temperature marginal.  You mean the timing fails when the device runs warm?  There is no reason for that unless the tools fail to properly analyze timing... or you just don't run timing analysis. 

Anyone can be a bad designer I suppose is what you are saying.  My experience is that with MCUs designers attempt to manage potential failures, but often they are not recognized up front.  With HDL the various failures (other than just not designing the right logic) are much fewer and easier to avoid.  Even errors in logic are not hard to find if you do a proper job of validating the design.


Quote
FPGAs are ever so tempting for many projects because you can go for a "direct solution" whereas with software you often have to use imagination (clever use of timers, etc). But you pay for that dead-end development route afterwards, with dead-end tools which go unsupported after a year or two, and a project nobody can pick up.

I don't know what the current Xilinx tool licensing is (it isn't dongles anymore) but if they use FlexLM that is a nightmare.

Again, I have no idea what you mean about "dead-end tools".  HDL is not tied to a specific tool.  Just like compilers synthesis software isolates the language from the target.  There is little reason today to write code with special features that require specific tools for implementation. 

I just don't know what your issues with FPGAs and the tools are based on, but it must have been some horrific adventures at some point in the past.
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Offline daqq

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #41 on: April 15, 2021, 07:20:03 am »
FPGAs are ever so tempting for many projects because you can go for a "direct solution" whereas with software you often have to use imagination (clever use of timers, etc). But you pay for that dead-end development route afterwards, with dead-end tools which go unsupported after a year or two, and a project nobody can pick up.
Are you quite sure about that? HDL is far more portable than 'cleverly used timers' between various vendors. And please note that 'using your imagination' occasionally translates into 'Create a Rube Goldbergesque mechanism where the five timers are used in conjunction with the DMA, USART and SPI set to an obscure setting and connected externally'.

As to unsupported tools... where? You can download up to date tools that will open ancient projects or download the ancient tools. Sure, not every tool in FPGAland is perfect and Xilinx are a bit dickish about updating their tools for their older devices (meaning series 6 since series 7 came out ~10 years ago), but there are other vendors out there who have the equivalent stuff.

edit: And dropping support for a tool after a year or two after it came out has been my experience with MCUs rather than FPGAs. I'm sure that it can happen, but it's rare on both fronts.

Could you please tell me what kind of project traumatised you to this level against FPGAs? Was it recent or are you just comparing the state of the FPGA tools from 20 years ago to the state of the MCU tools today?
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 07:21:48 am by daqq »
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Offline filssavi

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #42 on: April 15, 2021, 07:31:11 am »
I can tell you that "total determinism of FPGAs" is fiction :)

It is close, if designed correctly, paying lots of attention to sync clocking etc, but it is easy to generate a design which is temperature-marginal, metastable, etc.

There is no fundamental difference between complex logic in hardware, and software. There are just different ways to screw up :)

FPGAs are ever so tempting for many projects because you can go for a "direct solution" whereas with software you often have to use imagination (clever use of timers, etc). But you pay for that dead-end development route afterwards, with dead-end tools which go unsupported after a year or two, and a project nobody can pick up.

I don't know what the current Xilinx tool licensing is (it isn't dongles anymore) but if they use FlexLM that is a nightmare.

Even the free version of vivado (I dont know intel tools but i suspect it it the same)  allows you (and it is actually configured by default) to perform timing analisys in all corners of the PVT space, so if you use the tool correctly it will find the timing violations. Of course if the design is poor with wierd unconstrained CDCs or large use of asynchronous logic for example you might have timing problems, but that is neither the FPGA nor the tools fault.

Now if you put softcores inside the FPGA, you might have some non deterministic behaviour if the code to logic interface is not extremely well designed, but that is not the logic's fault
 

Offline TMM

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #43 on: April 15, 2021, 10:58:03 am »
Wow!  Looks like soon all the chip manufacturers will become a single company.

Does this type of merges/acquisitions happen in other industries, too?

Ever hear of a little company called General Motors?  How about Fiat Chrysler Automobiles/Stellantis?  The UK had over a dozen car companies before WWII, but ended up with just two or three, I couldn't keep track.  Other than Rolls and Bentley I'm not sure they have any now... opps, Rolls is owned by BMW and Bentley is owned by VW.  Oh, well.
Morgan is still independent and Aston-Martin is semi-independent of the global conglomerates.
Mercedes-Benz is set to own 20% of Aston Martin, and the cars already use Mercedes-Benz engines/driveline and infotainment among other things if I'm not mistaken. Pretty inevitable in an age where cars are becoming a smartphone on wheels and the profit margins are ever smaller, even on a luxury car.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 10:59:40 am by TMM »
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #44 on: April 15, 2021, 02:21:30 pm »
Mercedes-Benz is set to own 20% of Aston Martin, and the cars already use Mercedes-Benz engines/driveline and infotainment among other things if I'm not mistaken. Pretty inevitable in an age where cars are becoming a smartphone on wheels and the profit margins are ever smaller, even on a luxury car.

You don't know the half of it.  I have a Tesla model X and the durn thing is worse than my cell phone with features constantly appearing and disappearing, UI changes and just plain not working very well since nearly everything in the car is a "beta" feature.  I think my cell phone is actually less disruptive.  At least I can google to find how to fix the issues in my phone.  I can google from the car (even if it is slow and clumsy) but there are never fixes, just commiseration.
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Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #45 on: April 15, 2021, 03:05:35 pm »
Mercedes-Benz is set to own 20% of Aston Martin, and the cars already use Mercedes-Benz engines/driveline and infotainment among other things if I'm not mistaken. Pretty inevitable in an age where cars are becoming a smartphone on wheels and the profit margins are ever smaller, even on a luxury car.

You don't know the half of it.  I have a Tesla model X and the durn thing is worse than my cell phone with features constantly appearing and disappearing, UI changes and just plain not working very well since nearly everything in the car is a "beta" feature.  I think my cell phone is actually less disruptive.  At least I can google to find how to fix the issues in my phone.  I can google from the car (even if it is slow and clumsy) but there are never fixes, just commiseration.

A few years ago, my wife bought a new Mini Cooper but declined Mini's equivalent of On-Star. A few months later, we went out to eat. When we got back to the car, it was raining and the windshield wipers wouldn't work. They had been about an hour earlier. I half-jokingly said that Mini must have pushed a firmware update. She called the dealership and that is exactly what happened. So even though she didn't have the On-Star-type service, the car was still in regular communication with Mini.

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Offline asmi

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #46 on: April 15, 2021, 08:16:12 pm »
I know that FPGAs and FPGA+CPU SoCs are used a lot in ADAS systems. If you have adaptive cruise in your car, or 360° camera, odds are there is a Zynq hiding somewhere doing the heavy lifting :)

Offline Bud

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #47 on: April 15, 2021, 08:43:24 pm »
I have a Tesla model X and the durn thing is worse than my cell phone with features constantly appearing and disappearing, UI changes and just plain not working very well since nearly everything in the car is a "beta" feature.

Wow, that is plain dangerous. They should not be doing that type of experimentation in the field. Would certainly drive me mad.
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #48 on: April 15, 2021, 10:02:18 pm »
I have a Tesla model X and the durn thing is worse than my cell phone with features constantly appearing and disappearing, UI changes and just plain not working very well since nearly everything in the car is a "beta" feature.

Wow, that is plain dangerous. They should not be doing that type of experimentation in the field. Would certainly drive me mad.

It is nice that they continually improve the car in many ways... all free.  But it's not so fun knowing that at any time features can change or even not work as well.  Mean while they have never gotten the automatic high beam control and the automatic wipers to work fully.  It's not like they designed these features last year.  After 8 years these things still work very marginally.  For the head lights I can take full manual control.  For the wipers the choices are automatic with manual override, or no intermittent wiper at all.  They don't have a knob on the wiper stalk to let you dial in the delay rate.  I guess they figured they would be able to make it work well.
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Offline srb1954

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Re: AMD acquires Xilinx
« Reply #49 on: April 15, 2021, 10:04:25 pm »
Morgan is still independent and Aston-Martin is semi-independent of the global conglomerates.
Mercedes-Benz is set to own 20% of Aston Martin, and the cars already use Mercedes-Benz engines/driveline and infotainment among other things if I'm not mistaken. Pretty inevitable in an age where cars are becoming a smartphone on wheels and the profit margins are ever smaller, even on a luxury car.
Yes, Mercedes is extending its tentacles into Aston-Martin but they don't have a controlling interest over the company which is why I would describe Aston-Martin as still being semi-independent. The increasing usage of brought-in drive trains and infotainment systems is inevitable these days for small volume manufacturers as they don't have the financial and engineering resources to develop the very complex equipment demanded by today's market.

By the way Morgan have long used BMW drive trains in their cars but they still continue on their independent path with their idiosyncratic car designs.
 


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