AI Market Ramps Everywhere


Artificial Intelligence (AI) has inspired the general populace, but its rapid rise over the past few years has given many people pause. From realistic concerns about robots taking over jobs to sci-fi scares about robots more intelligent than humans building ever smarter robots themselves, AI inspires plenty of angst. Within the technology industry, we have a better understanding about the pote... » read more

Designing For Ultra-Low-Power IoT Devices


Optimizing designs for power is becoming the top design challenge in battery-driven IoT devices, boxed in by a combination of requirements such as low cost, minimum performance and functionality, as well as the need for at least some of the circuits to be always on. Power optimization is growing even more complicated as AI inferencing moves from the data center to the edge. Even simple... » read more

The DNA of an Artificial Intelligence SoC


Over the past decade, a few advancements have made artificial intelligence (AI) one of the most exciting technologies of our lifetime. In 2012, Geoffrey Everest Hinton demonstrated his generalized back propagation neural network algorithm in the Imagenet challenge, which revolutionized the field of computer vision. However, the math was developed years prior to 2012, and it was the available m... » read more

Will AI Drive Scaling Forward?


The almost ubiquitous rollout of AI and its offshoots—machine learning, deep learning, neural nets of all types—will require significantly more processing power as the amount of data that needs to be processed continues to grow by orders of magnitude. What isn't clear yet is how that will affect semiconductor manufacturing or how quickly that might happen. AI is more than the latest buz... » read more

Fab Equipment Challenges For 2019


After a period of record growth, the semiconductor equipment industry is facing a slowdown in 2019, in addition to several technical challenges that still need to be resolved. Generally, the equipment industry saw enormous demand in 2017, and the momentum extended into the first part of 2018. But then the memory market began deteriorating in the middle of this year, causing both DRAM and NAND ... » read more

Foundries See Growth, New Issues In 2019


The silicon foundry business is poised for growth in 2019, although the industry faces several challenges across a number of market segments next year. Generally, foundry vendors saw steady growth in 2018, but many are ending the year on a sour note. Weak demand for Apple’s new iPhone XR and a downturn in the cryptocurrency market have impacted several IC suppliers and foundries, causing t... » read more

What’s Changing In Memory


As emerging big data and artificial intelligence (AI) applications, including machine learning, drive innovations across many industries, the issue of how to advance memory technologies to meet evolving computing requirements presents several challenges for the industry. The mainstream memory technologies, DRAM and NAND flash, have long been reliable industry workhorses, each optimized for s... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Arm made five 2019 predictions for the Internet of Things. They are: The intelligent home goes mainstream; personalized delivery options; improved health-care service; smart cities seek to improve revenue streams and citizen engagement; and smart buildings use more technology for efficiencies. The company also commissioned a worldwide survey of 2,000 consumers, conducted by ... » read more

Security, Scaling and Power


If anyone has doubts about the slowdown and increasing irrelevance of Moore's Law, Intel's official unveiling of its advanced packaging strategy should leave little doubt. Inertia has ended and the roadmap is being rewritten. Intel's discussion of advanced packaging is nothing new. The company has been public about its intentions for years, and started dropping hints back when Pat Gelsinger ... » read more

The Cost Of Accuracy


How accurate does a system need to be, and what are you willing to pay for that accuracy? There are many sources of inaccuracy throughout the development flow of electronic systems, most of which involve complex tradeoffs. Inaccuracy leaves an impact on your design in ways you are not even aware of, hidden by best practices or guard-banding. EDA tools also inject some inaccuracy. As the i... » read more

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