LLM Inference On CPUs (Intel)


A technical paper titled “Efficient LLM Inference on CPUs” was published by researchers at Intel. Abstract: "Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance and tremendous potential across a wide range of tasks. However, deploying these models has been challenging due to the astronomical amount of model parameters, which requires a demand for large memory capacity an... » read more

RISC-V Wants All Your Cores


RISC-V is no longer content to disrupt the CPU industry. It is waging war against every type of processor integrated into an SoC or advanced package, an ambitious plan that will face stiff competition from entrenched players with deep-pocketed R&D operations and their well-constructed ecosystems. When Calista Redmond, CEO for RISC-V International, said at last year's summit that RISC-V w... » read more

ISA and Microarchitecture Extensions Over Dense Matrix Engines to Support Flexible Structured Sparsity for CPUs (Georgia Tech, Intel Labs)


A technical paper titled "VEGETA: Vertically-Integrated Extensions for Sparse/Dense GEMM Tile Acceleration on CPUs" was published (preprint) by researchers at Georgia Tech and Intel Labs. Abstract: "Deep Learning (DL) acceleration support in CPUs has recently gained a lot of traction, with several companies (Arm, Intel, IBM) announcing products with specialized matrix engines accessible v... » read more

Dealing With Performance Bottlenecks In SoCs


A surge in the amount of data that SoCs need to process is bogging down performance, and while the processors themselves can handle that influx, memory and communication bandwidth are straining. The question now is what can be done about it. The gap between memory and CPU bandwidth — the so-called memory wall — is well documented and definitely not a new problem. But it has not gone away... » read more

Screening For Silent Data Errors


Engineers are beginning to understand the causes of silent data errors (SDEs) and the data center failures they cause, both of which can be reduced by increasing test coverage and boosting inspection on critical layers. Silent data errors are so named because if engineers don’t look for them, then they don’t know they exist. Unlike other kinds of faulty behaviors, these errors also can c... » read more

Complex Tradeoffs In Inferencing Chips


Designing AI/ML inferencing chips is emerging as a huge challenge due to the variety of applications and the highly specific power and performance needs for each of them. Put simply, one size does not fit all, and not all applications can afford a custom design. For example, in retail store tracking, it's acceptable to have a 5% or 10% margin of error for customers passing by a certain aisle... » read more

Why Silent Data Errors Are So Hard To Find


Cloud service providers have traced the source of silent data errors to defects in CPUs — as many as 1,000 parts per million — which produce faulty results only occasionally and under certain micro-architectural conditions. That makes them extremely hard to find. Silent data errors (SDEs) are random defects produced in manufacturing, not a design bug or software error. Those defects gene... » read more

New Uses For AI In Chips


Artificial intelligence is being deployed across a number of new applications, from improving performance and reducing power in a wide range of end devices to spotting irregularities in data movement for security reasons. While most people are familiar with using machine learning and deep learning to distinguish between cats and dogs, emerging applications show how this capability can be use... » read more

What Future Processors Will Look Like


Mark Papermaster, CTO at AMD, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about architectural changes that are required as the benefits of scaling decrease, including chiplets, new standards for heterogeneous integration, and different types of memory. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What does a processor look like in five years? Is it a bunch of chips in a package? I... » read more

New End Markets, More Demand For Complex Chips


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss economic conditions and how that affects chip design with Anirudh Devgan, president and CEO of Cadence; Joseph Sawicki, executive vice president of Siemens EDA; Niels Faché, vice president and general manager at Keysight; Simon Segars, advisor at Arm; and Aki Fujimura, chairman and CEO of D2S. This discussion was held in front... » read more

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