AI Buildout Makes HPC Simulation More Challenging


Simulations of semiconductors and systems are becoming bigger, more complex, and increasingly necessary, mirroring everything that is happening to the hardware itself — particularly in AI data centers. The move beyond monolithic chips to multi-die assemblies now requires solving some thorny multi-physics challenges, such as thermal and power delivery, which are increasingly difficult to mo... » read more

Chiplets Vs. Soft IP: Different In Almost Every Way


Chiplets serve a similar function as the soft IP widely used in chips today, but the similarities end there. While both can speed time to market and enable design teams to focus limited resources where they can best be applied, the implementation, manufacturing, test, and long-term business requirements wrought by a chiplet marketplace would be very different. Soft IP (also known as RTL IP) ... » read more

Noise: A Chip Killer


Noise has always been important to communications experts, but it's quickly becoming an issue that every semiconductor designer has to contend with. Some chips already have been compromised. Noise can be defined as any deviation from the ideal that can impact intended functionality. When it comes to semiconductors, that could mean the ability to reliably extract a signal value at the intende... » read more

Power Integrity And Voltage Issues Get Harder To Detect And Solve


Voltage and power integrity are becoming increasingly critical and challenging for chip designers and architects, regardless of which process technology they are using or which market they are targeting. An explosion of features vying unevenly for current is increasing the number of constraints and possible interactions that engineers need to sort through to ensure reliability. These include... » read more

Multiple AI Scale-Up Options Emerge


Artificial intelligence (AI) workloads are very different from those traditionally run inside of data centers, and while the current infrastructure can accommodate those needs, there is a constant demand for higher performance and better power efficiency. It can take months to train a large language model, even with a huge number of processing elements. Typically this involves commandeering ... » read more

Data Centers Boost Voltage For Higher Efficiency


The power architecture used in HPC and AI data centers today is about to undergo a significant change in an effort to boost power efficiency. While voltages at the chip level will remain the same, the voltages leading to those chips will be kept higher for longer distances. This change has broad implications for DC-DC converters. The existing architecture brings AC to each rack, converts it ... » read more

Startup Tips To Get From Seed Funding To Series A, B, C


Startups are often created by experienced engineers who figure out how to solve a technical problem they are dealing with at work, or by PhD candidates in research labs before they have even started their first full-time job. Either way, getting seed money to the tune of a few million dollars is relatively easy compared to securing further rounds of funding and achieving the company’s exit go... » read more

Current Problems Grow For Power Delivery


IR drop is becoming more problematic for a growing proportion of designs, an indication that the power delivery network (PDN) is not providing enough current to parts of the design when required. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to this problem. In the past, when voltages were much higher, a small voltage droop didn't really matter. At the same time, wires were much thicker and presented ... » read more

Balancing Workloads In AI Processor Designs


A growing number of AI processors are being designed around specific workloads rather than standardized benchmarks, optimizing performance and power efficiency, but often with enough flexibility to adapt to future changes. While the fundamentals of matrix multiplication and software optimization still apply, those alone are no longer sufficient. Designs need to address specific data types, w... » read more

Coloring Optical Signals For More Bandwidth In Data Centers


Copper cabling has been the workhorse for moving data inside of AI and HPC data centers, but fiber is nipping at its heels. Optics brings three possible bandwidth multipliers — wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), the use of different modes, and polarization. Each has a role in longer-distance optical links, but the tradeoffs are different in the data center. WDM appears poised to boost... » read more

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