IT MAY BE a long time before you can own a truly self-driving car. But chipmakers are placing bets that you will.

On Tuesday, the Japanese chipmaker Renesas, the second-largest provider of semiconductors for the automotive industry, said it will acquire San Jose based chipmaker Integrated Device Technology (IDT) for $6.7 billion, in part to prepare for autonomous vehicles.

IDT has not historically provided chips for cars, but it does have sensor and wireless technologies that could help Renesas compete in the market for chips for autonomous vehicles. “Renesas and IDT have complementary technologies,” says Objective Analysis analyst Jim Handy. “Renesas will be able to help IDT bring up automotive products while IDT helps Renesas deal with very high frequency low-latency digital electronics.
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