The Race Begins For Much Bigger Abstractions In Data Centers


Key Takeaways Data center build-out is enabling much larger and more complex abstractions. Competition is building for digital/virtual twins across multiple industry segments, including automotive, aerospace, and chip manufacturing. AI, and particularly AI agents, will play a significant role in sorting through data to find potential trouble spots. The frenzy of new data cen... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Geopolitics U.S. lawmakers are urging tighter export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) to China, warning existing loopholes threaten national security. "China is working to build domestic SME by exploiting access to U.S. and allied subcomponents required to produce tools," states the letter, which also says better coordination with allies is essential. The U.S.... » read more

Chiplets And 3D-ICs Add New Electrical And Mechanical Challenges


Key Takeaways • Chiplets and 3D-IC architectures add new thermal-mechanical stresses that can affect the reliability of entire systems. • As chiplets are assembled into packages, defectivity targets become more stringent for each component in a system. • Traditional silos are breaking down, forcing design teams to address issues such as materials choices that previously were handled by... » read more

AI, GPU, And HPC Data Centers: The Infrastructure Behind Modern AI


Artificial intelligence (AI) is stretching compute infrastructure well beyond what traditional enterprise data centers were designed to handle. Modern AI training requires massively parallel compute, low-latency networking, high-throughput storage pipelines, and facility engineering that can safely support higher rack power densities than legacy environments. These demands are fueling the eme... » read more

UCIe’s Major Technical Components Are Now In Place


Key Takeaways UCIe 3.0 doubles bandwidth and enhances manageability, addressing new use cases and following an annual update cycle since 2023. The growing demand for chiplet-based architectures in AI data centers is driven by the limitations of monolithic chips, making inter-chiplet communication and connectivity crucial. While UCIe was initially seen as feature-heavy, many of its ma... » read more

Minimum Energy Per Query


Key Takeaways Extracting heat from a chip faster is a short-term fix to a bigger problem. The longer-term challenge is how to reduce the amount of energy used per query. Data movement, guardbanding, and software inefficiency are key targets for the future. Heat is a serious problem within AI chips, and it is limiting how much processing can be done. The solution is either to... » read more

Silicon Photonics In The Data Center: What A CMOS Exec Needs To Know


Silicon Photonics is changing the data center, with the biggest changes still ahead. Figure 1: Google Jupiter Network for multi-thousand Ironwood TPU clusters. Source: Google Refresher for new readers: Data centers contain hundreds or thousands of racks. For example, the Nvidia GB200 NVL72 AI compute/switch rack is about 24 inches wide, about 88 inches high and 42 inches deep. I... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Intel hired ex-Qualcomm GPU guru Eric Demers for the company's high-performance GPU push, setting the stage for a three-way battle with Nvidia and AMD. The key targets for Intel and AMD will be better power efficiency and a programming model that rivals CUDA, but don't expect Nvidia to stand still. Acquisitions Texas Instruments plans to acquire Silicon Labs for ~$7.5B cash to enhance i... » read more

Securing Hardware For The Quantum Era


Key Takeaways: Quantum threats to security are already real. Adversaries are already harvesting data that will be decrypted later by quantum computers. Quantum computers capable of breaking RSA and ECC may arrive as early as next year. Asymmetric encryption algorithms like RSA and ECC will become inadequate against quantum threats, while symmetric encryption (such as AES) is less vul... » read more

Mixer Technology For Advanced Communications, Part 1: Mixer Basics


Mixers are a fundamental component of wireless communications, and their design constraints become increasingly stringent with the demands of next-generation systems such as 5G and 6G. To meet these requirements, RF designers must optimize networks to support ever-increasing data rates while addressing challenges such as signal losses at millimeter-wave frequencies and the noise susceptibility ... » read more

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