EU asks Qualcomm to seek antitrust approval for Autotalks acquisition

Last August, EU regulators said that US chipmaker Qualcomm must seek antitrust approval from 15 EU countries when it plans to acquire Israeli automotive chipmaker Autotalks. Although the deal is below the EU's turnover threshold, the European Commission believes that the deal is very important for OEMs and other companies that need to obtain vehicle-to-everything (V2X) semiconductors. Autotalks released its first-generation chip CRATON in 2012, the industry's first V2X chip. The chip supports V2X based on DSRC (802.11p) and has a built-in line-speed hardware acceleration engine. CRATON chips are used in multiple pilot projects around the world and are also deployed in mining farms. In 2016, Autotalks released the second-generation chip series CRATON2 and SECTON. A hardware security module (HSM) was added for secure signing. CRATON2 integrates a processor for running a complete V2X protocol stack. In 2018, Autotalks introduced C-V2X into CRATON2 and SECTON chips, making them the only V2X chips in the world that can support both C-V2X and DSRC.