The “Natively Flexible” Processor Has Arrived: Here’s What We Need To Make It Mainstream


The microprocessor is one of history’s pivotal inventions, ranking in influence with breakthroughs such as the wheel, the transistor, and the printing press. There is no escaping their popularity or usefulness either: with tens of billions of processors produced each year they have revolutionized industries such as health care, media, retail, transportation, and of course information manageme... » read more

For The Edge, It’s All About Location, Location, Location


They are centrally located, are connected to power grids and water systems, and are rapidly thinning out. And you can probably get a new cell phone case or a corn dog in the atrium. Could shopping malls become a future home for the edge? Edge computing has transformed over the last few years from being a vaguely defined concept to a fundamental part of the future data infrastructure. Band... » read more

How To Improve Software? Start With The Hardware


By Travis Walton and Udi Maor Physicist Art Rosenfeld was working late at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab one night in 1973 when he noticed it. Despite an ongoing energy crisis, his colleagues routinely left their lights on after they left. Waste was one of the largest consumers of power in the state, he soon discovered: pilot lights consumed 10% of gas in homes. Switching from physics to ... » read more

Is AI Good Or Bad For The Planet?


Will artificial intelligence save or sink planet earth? We’re surrounded by AI. When you use the internet, take a photo, use predictive text, or watch TV, you are interacting with AI. And we are still in the early stages of this revolution in technology and our lives. But AI can require large amounts of power. Researchers have documented the astounding amount of power required to train ... » read more

3D Stacking For Performance And Efficiency


Moore’s Law scaling is slowing down and limited improvements in performance, power, area, and cost are available from one process node to the next. As a result, advanced packaging and 3D stacking technologies are taking a front seat as the key drivers for next-generation high-performance energy-efficient designs. These types of system-in-package (SiP) technologies require designers to reima... » read more

The EV Era Has Begun: Here Are Five Things We Need For It To Succeed


The EV era has officially begun. General Motors says it will eliminate gas and diesel cars and SUVs from its lineup by 2035 while Ford will go all electric in Europe by 2030. The UK issued plans for phasing out diesel and gas cars by 2035 and then moved it forward to 2030. Fleet customers such as UPS and Amazon are ordering zero emissions delivery vehicles by the thousands and investing in s... » read more

Certification And Collaboration Key To Closing IoT Security-Perception Gap


When it comes to security today, there’s perception and then there’s cold, hard reality. Here’s the reality: Cybersecurity Ventures expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15% per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, which is triple the 2015 figure. To get a sense for how pervasive the problem is, Symantec set up a “honeypot” system that dete... » read more

Is Computing Facing An Energy Crisis?


Is the end near? If the topic is energy efficiency gains in computing, the answer depends on whom you ask. The steady increase in performance per watt over the decades has been one of the most important drivers in our industry. Last year I was thumbing through a neighbor’s 1967 Motorola IC catalog that featured such space age wonders as a small control chip of the sort that went into th... » read more

Standard Benchmarks For AI Innovation


There is no standard measurement for machine learning performance today, meaning there is no single answer for how companies build a processor for ML across all use cases while balancing compute and memory constraints. For the longest time, every group would pick a definition and test to suit their own needs. This lack of common understanding of performance hinders customers' buying decis... » read more

Building Billions Of Batteryless Devices


Later this month, Arm will celebrate its 30 year anniversary and the engineering milestones that have resulted in more than 180 billion Arm-based chips being shipped in everything from sensors to smartphones to the world’s fastest supercomputer. In each of these cases, much of Arm’s success has been in our dedication to delivering the highest performance per watt. But while Arm may ha... » read more

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