Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Electronic system design (ESD) industry revenue is up 8.9% from $3,458.2 million in Q3 2021 to $3,767.4 million in Q3 2022 according to a report from SEMI’s ESD Alliance. Read our in-depth take on what this means. In an attempt to make a viable reusable DNA biosensor probe, NIST researchers used an extremely low-power FETdeveloped at CEA-LETI to remove noise in their DNA biosensor circuitr... » read more

Choosing The Correct High-Bandwidth Memory


The number of options for how to build high-performance chips is growing, but the choices for attached memory have barely budged. To achieve maximum performance in automotive, consumer, and hyperscale computing, the choices come down to one or more flavors of DRAM, and the biggest tradeoff is cost versus speed. DRAM remains an essential component in any of these architectures, despite years ... » read more

Research Bits: Jan. 24


Transistor-free compute-in-memory Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Sandia National Laboratories, and Brookhaven National Laboratory propose a transistor-free compute-in-memory (CIM) architecture to overcome memory bottlenecks and reduce power consumption in AI workloads. "Even when used in a compute-in-memory architecture, transistors compromise the access time of data," sai... » read more

Research Bits: Jan. 17


Ionic circuit for neural nets Researchers at Harvard University and DNA Script developed an ionic circuit comprising hundreds of ionic transistors for neural net computing. While ions in water move slower than electrons in semiconductors, the team noted that the diversity of ionic species with different physical and chemical properties could be harnessed for more diverse information process... » read more

PCIe 6.0 Takes Data Center Performance To The Next Level


Looking back at 2022, we saw a major update to the PCI Express (PCIe) specification. PCIe 6.0 brought with it some of the most fundamental changes yet seen by the specification, resulting in some exciting capabilities that are set to take data center performance to the next level in the years ahead. PCIe has been the interconnect of choice in computing for two decades now. Its ongoing advanc... » read more

Design And Verification Methodologies Breaking Down


Tools, methodologies and flows that have been in place since the dawn of semiconductor design are breaking down, but this time there isn't a large pool of researchers coming up with potential solutions. The industry is on its own to formulate those ideas, and that will take a lot of cooperation between EDA companies, fabs, and designers, which has not been their strong point in the past. It ... » read more

Will Floating Point 8 Solve AI/ML Overhead?


While the media buzzes about the Turing Test-busting results of ChatGPT, engineers are focused on the hardware challenges of running large language models and other deep learning networks. High on the ML punch list is how to run models more efficiently using less power, especially in critical applications like self-driving vehicles where latency becomes a matter of life or death. AI already ... » read more

Operator Anxiety


Are you one of the early pioneers who have purchased an electric car? In the United States in Q3 2022, 6% of new vehicle sales were pure electric models. Despite all the hype — and significant purchase subsidies in support of battery cars — today only 1% of the cumulative number of vehicles in service in the US are purely plug-in electric. One of the reasons electric car sales have not full... » read more

Is AI Sustainable? Five Ways To Reduce Its Carbon Footprint


Forget adding bunny ears to your selfie; AI has long since grown up and begun tackling tough, environmental problems. Its data-crunching superpowers make it ideal for everything from ocean monitoring to climate change prediction modeling. But training AI models requires vast amounts of energy, so do the benefits outweigh the environmental cost? In short, is AI sustainable? Sustainable AI: fact... » read more

Growing System Complexity Drives More IP Reuse


IP reuse of both third-party and internal IP is growing, but it's also becoming more complex to manage. There is more IP being used, and more systems into which it needs to be integrated, combined with other IP, and tracked throughout an organization. In some cases, this is an economic requirement. In others, designs are so complex that engineering teams need to focus on where they will make... » read more

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