Synaptics stock spiked Friday after the chip maker offered upbeat guidance for the March quarter, as the company saw robust demand for components used in a wide assortment of connected devices.

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ID R&D and Synaptics partnership to bring voice biometrics to smart home edge devices

ID R&D and Synaptics have partnered to integrate voice biometrics with the VideoSmart VS600 platform to enable fast and accurate identification, authentication, and personalization on edge computing devices for smart home applications.

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Intrinsic ID’s QuiddiKey PUF Selected by Fungible in Drive to Secure Next-Gen Data Centers

Intrinsic ID announced that California-based data center infrastructure upstart Fungible Inc., has licensed QuiddiKey for its Fungible DPU™ SoCs.

Fungible’s industry-first DPU – is a family of novel data-centric processors that deliver radically improved performance and cost efficiencies for data centers at all scales.

By selecting Intrinsic ID’s QuiddiKey, a hardware IP security solution based on SRAM PUF, Fungible is fortifying its security strategy by provisioning its chips with internally generated, device-unique keys without compromising performance.

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The latest report by XDA hints that two of the major video streaming platforms, YouTube and Netflix, may soon require supporting the AV1 codec for future content.

Well, gone are the days when we used to download and watch videos offline. As fast speed internet is readily available and has become a staple food in every walk of life, streaming has taken over.

However, streaming on mobile data is still limited. Because of limited data available on internet plans. This is the reason the AV1 codec has been a topic of interest in the recent past.

AV1 codec is a better codec to save bandwidth, along with improving the quality of the content. Now, as per a press release about its new VideoSmart VS640 edge computing SoC, Synaptics has given a peek into the future of YouTube and Netflix.

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As streaming has taken over, the AV1 codec has come up as a way to save bandwidth and improve quality going forward. According to a mention from the folks over at Synaptics, YouTube and Netflix apparently have plans to require AV1 at some point in the future.

There’s no date attached to this right now, but Synaptics mentions that AV1 will be required by YouTube and Netflix, the two biggest streaming platforms in the world, at some point. Why mention? It comes as Synaptics announces its VideoSmart VS640 SoC that supports hardware decoding of the AV1 standard.

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Google is already starting to require Android TV devices to ship with support for AV1 decoding.

AV1 has been the subject of much interest in recent years — at least as far as interest in obscurely technical topics like video encoding goes. And it's also gaining support from many of the most prominent players in the tech space, with YouTube and Netflix both adding at least partial support on their platforms.

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StockX insiders say the resale platform is planning for a 2021 IPO. Here are 6 other marketplace platform that experts predict could go public soon.

7 marketplace platforms, including StockX, Faire, and virtual goods seller Genies, that experts predict could follow Poshmark to IPO

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Finding a good deal is harder than it looks: Even when the discount seems steep, you’re usually left wondering if what you’ve unearthed is truly an excellent deal or just a dud wrapped in overhyped sales lingo. Price drops on refurbished gear—gently used tech and appliances that are resold following a manufacturer tune-up—only complicate the matter. Refurbs are almost always sold at a significant discount (and more often than not, they work just as well as brand-new gear), but the idea of dropping a lot of cash on previously owned items can feel a bit unsettling.

The impulse to shy away from refurbs is understandable: The deal was difficult enough to find in the first place; toss in the possibility of a refurb that could potentially arrive damaged, in shoddy condition, or otherwise nonfunctional, and it becomes that much more daunting. The Wirecutter Deals team has done the research for you, and before we post the deal, a refurb has to meet our specific criteria:

• It should be refurbished direct from the manufacturer. Manufacturers usually offer the best return policies and warranties, and many companies follow their own protocol when testing and refurbishing items. That means if you’re on the hunt for a refurbished Roomba or stand mixer, for instance, you’ll have better luck buying directly from iRobot or KitchenAid. Just keep in mind that many manufacturers have storefronts on third-party selling sites such as eBay, Newegg, and Amazon, so you don’t always have to make the purchase from the manufacturer’s website to secure a trustworthy refurb. Our one exception is that every so often we find a good deal on a relatively inexpensive item from a reliable seller on a non-manufacturer refurb. We’ve had the most luck with Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and we cap the price of the item at around $100. It must, however, meet our other criteria as well. (See below for more details.)
• It should have a 90-day warranty, at minimum. If something turns out to be not quite right a month or two down the line, you’ll have a chance to get your money back on your new-to-you vacuum or blender. The only instance in which we’ll post a deal on a refurbished pick with a shorter warranty is when the item costs $30 or less.
• Returns should be free. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to return something that doesn’t live up to expectations, so we avoid companies that charge a return fee or otherwise make the return process a hassle.

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While many eyes, including mine, were on CES this week, today, I wanted to talk about a tech announcement that may have flown under the radar in the run-up to the holidays. I’ve been following Synaptics for some time now and watched it progress from Synaptics 1.0 (PC trackpads, etc.) to 2.0 (mobile, fingerprint readers) and now, what it calls Synaptics 3.0—a much more focused Synaptics, expanding aggressively into new, rapidly growing markets such as consumer IoT and automotive. Under new CEO Michael Hurston (who took the reins in 2019), Synaptics has been able to break out of the stagnation it fell into in the mid-2010s. While Synaptics has long had an impressive portfolio of IP—1,800+ patents and counting—it struggled to develop effective roadmaps and engage constructively with customers. A big part of the company’s comeback is due to its renewed focus and diversification into IoT, the success of which was evident in Synaptics’ recent Q1 earnings results. And that is the category where today’s news falls: the introduction of a new offering, the Katana Platform, an SoC for low power edge AI. Let’s take a look at what Katana is all about.

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Low-Power MCU Company in Tie-Up with Synaptics

When you’re in the processor business, you’re also in the compiler business. Like it or not, inventing a new CPU or MCU with its own instruction set means you’re also on the hook for its entire software-development toolchain. In fact, a lot of “chip companies” employ more programmers than circuit designers.

And you thought inventing a new computer was hard.

That was the tall order facing Eta Compute. One of many, in fact. The small startup took on all sorts of self-imposed burdens. It invented a new MCU for AI inferencing. It invented a new low-power circuit design methodology it called DIAL (delay-insensitive asynchronous logic). It developed the chip’s compiler from scratch. Then it reinvented DIAL to create CVFS (continuous voltage and frequency scaling), which it then used to create an entirely new second-generation chip, the ECM3532. Then it had to redo the compiler for the new chip. And, when all of that was done, it had to go beat the bushes looking for customers who wanted an ultra-low-power MCU for “ML at the edge” from a new company nobody had ever heard of.

Surprisingly, all of that worked, and Eta Compute now has a handful of happy paying customers. But it was too much effort to be sustainable, so the company has made a strategic pivot. It’s now a “software and systems company,” meaning MCU development has halted and its second generation of chips won’t have any offspring. It’s the end of the line for Eta Compute’s hardware roadmap, but a new life for its compiler.

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