Power/Performance Bits: July 3


2D straintronics Researchers at the University of Rochester and Xi’an Jiaotong University dug into how 2D materials behave when stretched to push the boundaries of what they can do. "We're opening up a new direction of study," says Stephen Wu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at Rochester. "There's a huge number of 2D materials with different properti... » read more

System Bits: July 3


CMU prof gets a shot at new supercomputer The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center will greet its Perlmutter supercomputing system in early 2020. The Cray-designed machine will be capable of 100 million billion floating operations per second. Zachary Ulissi of Carnegie Mellon University will be among the first researchers to use the supercomputer. "When this machine comes on... » read more

Security’s Very Strange Path To Success


Security at the chip level appears to be heading toward a more promising future. The reason is simple—more people are willing to pay for security than in the past. For the most part, security is like insurance. You don't know it's working until something goes wrong, and you don't necessarily even know right away if there has been a breach. Sometimes it takes years to show up, because it ca... » read more

Edge Complexity To Grow For 5G


Edge computing is becoming as critical to the success of 5G as millimeter-wave technology will be to the success of the edge. In fact, it increasingly looks as if neither will succeed without the other. 5G networks won’t be able to meet 3GPP’s 4-millisecond-latency rule without some layer to deliver the data, run the applications and broker the complexities of multi-tier Internet apps ac... » read more

Understanding The Importance Of Silicon Security


Vulnerabilities like Meltdown, Spectre and Foreshadow are understandably considered quite serious by the semiconductor industry. This is because they can be exploited by a determined attacker to access sensitive data that should be securely locked down but isn’t. We can think about a cloud-based server running multiple applications that process and store sensitive data. Vulnerabilities lik... » read more

TOPS, Memory, Throughput And Inference Efficiency


Dozens of companies have or are developing IP and chips for Neural Network Inference. Almost every AI company gives TOPS but little other information. What is TOPS? It means Trillions or Tera Operations per Second. It is primarily a measure of the maximum achievable throughput but not a measure of actual throughput. Most operations are MACs (multiply/accumulates), so TOPS = (number of MAC... » read more

Machine Learning Inferencing Moves To Mobile Devices


It may sound retro for a developer with access to hyperscale data centers to discuss apps that can be measured in kilobytes, but the emphasis increasingly is on small, highly capable devices. In fact, Google staff research engineer Pete Warden points to a new app that uses less than 100 kilobytes for RAM and storage, creates an inference model smaller than 20KB, and which is capable of proce... » read more

How To Automate Functional Safety


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss functional safety thinking, techniques and approaches to automation with Mike Stellfox, Fellow at Cadence; Bryan Ramirez, strategic marketing manager at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jörg Grosse, product manager for functional safety at OneSpin Solutions; and Marc Serughetti, senior director of product marketing for automotive verification solutions ... » read more

How To Solve Automotive Electrical Design Challenges To Get To Market Faster


By Dan Scott and Ulrike Hoff The never-ending development of new technologies in the automotive industry has led to the Content Dilemma, the conflict between the technology content that vehicle manufacturers try to integrate into their vehicles, and the weight, cost and packaging space required for wiring harnesses. Current technology trends driving the Content Dilemma include electrificatio... » read more

Applied Buys Kokusai For $2.2B


Applied Materials has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kokusai Electric for $2.2 billion in cash from investment firm KKR. For years, Kokusai Electric was a subsidiary of Hitachi. It sells epitaxial, thermal processing and other equipment. Then, as part of a complex business deal, KKR in 2017 acquired the semiconductor equipment business of Hitachi Kokusai Electric from Hitachi. ... » read more

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