Intel Acquires 15 Percent Stake In Mapping Firm HERE (reuters.com) 22
As the company looks to build its presence in automated driving technology, Intel announced on Tuesday it will acquire a 15 percent stake in German digital mapping firm HERE. Reuters reports: A filing to the German cartel office on Tuesday showed Intel has sought approval to buy a stake in the company, which is controlled by German carmakers Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen. Intel and HERE said in a statement that they had also signed an agreement to collaborate on the research and development of real-time updates of high definition (HD) maps for highly- and fully-automated driving. Intel did not disclose how much it would pay for the stake but said the transaction is expected to close in the first quarter. The deal highlights a shift in the dynamics of research and development in the car industry, which until recently saw automakers largely dictating terms for suppliers to manufacture their proprietary technologies at specified volumes and prices. Now carmakers are increasingly striking partnerships with technology firms using open technology standards, seeking to harness their expertise in areas including machine learning and mapping as they race against Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Tesla and Apple to develop driverless vehicles.
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Why HERE? (Score:2)
I'm starting to wonder about some of Intel's investments. Like they acquired McAfee and renamed it Intel Anti-Virus, I haven't seen it in too many places. Now, this. Didn't HERE get acquired by a German auto consortium?
Methinks Intel should start making parts that go into Teslas, and other EV cars. That would be a new growth market for them
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Intel need to invest in anti-virus software in order to keep their architecture in use. How big are the virus definition files? 250 Megabytes of data to protect against everything from script kiddies to ransomware. That's more disk space than desktop PC's from the mid 1990's. They have to, otherwise alternative OS with different security models and hardware architectures could take over.
Driverless vehicles depends computer vision at the low level, which in turn depends on parallel processing and embedded su
Oh boy!!! (Score:2)
Intel gets to ruin another software company!
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Not entirely fair. McAfee was pretty abysmal before Intel bought them.
Brings to mind the joke about Paul Otellini barking orders to an underling: ...time passes...
"Underling! Get McAfee for me!"
"Here Mr Otellini, sir, we have McAfee for you."
"Great! Which version?"
"....Uh... Version?"
The new software model (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of open source, we'll have proprietary software that has been owned and worked on by every large technology company in the world at one time or another.
Cool (Score:1)
HERE is definitely better than Google Maps and Apple Maps. They at least update their map more than once a year, if you're outside the US.
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HERE is definitely better than Google Maps and Apple Maps. They at least update their map more than once a year, if you're outside the US.
Dunno about that. DJI recently changed from Google maps to HERE for controlling their little drones. It has not gone over well with the community in the forums. Might be DJI's fault - they manage to screw up most firmware updates but it doesn't give warm fuzzies.
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Sadly... (Score:2)
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It's not meant for desktop computers; it's meant for automated vehicles to help them find the way.
And that I also think is the wrong approach. Maps are NEVER correct. There are accidental errors, there are changes to the landscape, temporary obstacles, etc. Normal maps should be good enough for a self-driving vehicle to find its way, just like people find the way: by looking at the actual streets, not by (literally) blindly following a map and hoping that works out fine. So even if maps are detailed enough