This is your Briefing for the week ending August 2nd.

We want the Internet of things to be smart, but being smart requires processing power – which will be lacking in millions of IoT devices. It’s what we call in the business “a conundrum.” But – there may be an answer! You’ll hear what that is.

As we reported last week, the biggest companies in the world are beginning to compete with their own chip suppliers. The latest example is Alibaba, which just released a high-performance processor of its own design. Alibaba’s move is significant for technological, financial, and political reasons. We’ll look into that.

Also, you’d think that the people building autonomous vehicles are using sound design principles.