For The Edge, It’s All About Location, Location, Location


They are centrally located, are connected to power grids and water systems, and are rapidly thinning out. And you can probably get a new cell phone case or a corn dog in the atrium. Could shopping malls become a future home for the edge? Edge computing has transformed over the last few years from being a vaguely defined concept to a fundamental part of the future data infrastructure. Band... » read more

Automotive Safety Island


The promise of autonomous vehicles is driving profound changes in the design and testing of automotive semiconductor parts. Automotive ICs, once deployed for simple functions like controlling windows, are now performing complex functions related to advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving applications. The processing power required results in very large and complex ICs that ... » read more

Shifting Toward Data-Driven Chip Architectures


An explosion in data is forcing chipmakers to rethink where to process data, which are the best types of processors and memories for different types of data, and how to structure, partition and prioritize the movement of raw and processed data. New chips from systems companies such as Google, Facebook, Alibaba, and IBM all incorporate this approach. So do those developed by vendors like Appl... » read more

Changes In Sensors And DSPs


Pulin Desai, group director for product marketing, management and business development at Cadence, talks about why processing is moving closer to the end point, how to save energy through reduced area and sensor fusion, and the impact of specialization, 3D capture and always-on circuits. » read more

Hyperconnectivity, Hyperscale Computing, And Moving Edges


As described in “The Four Pillars of Hyperscale Computing” last year, the four core components that development teams consider for data centers are computing, storage, memory, and networking. Over the previous decade, requirements for programmability have fundamentally changed data centers. Just over a decade ago, in 2010, virtual machines would compute user workloads on CPU-centric archite... » read more

One-On-One: Lip-Bu Tan


Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the impact of massive increases in data across a variety of industries, the growing need for computational software, and the potential implications of U.S.-China relations. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What do you see as the biggest change for the chip industry? Tan: We're in our fifth g... » read more

Machine Learning At The Edge


Moving machine learning to the edge has critical requirements on power and performance. Using off-the-shelf solutions is not practical. CPUs are too slow, GPUs/TPUs are expensive and consume too much power, and even generic machine learning accelerators can be overbuilt and are not optimal for power. In this paper, learn about creating new power/memory efficient hardware architectures to meet n... » read more

Developers Turn To Analog For Neural Nets


Machine-learning (ML) solutions are proliferating across a wide variety of industries, but the overwhelming majority of the commercial implementations still rely on digital logic for their solution. With the exception of in-memory computing, analog solutions mostly have been restricted to universities and attempts at neuromorphic computing. However, that’s starting to change. “Everyon... » read more

More Data Drives Focus On IC Energy Efficiency


Computing workloads are becoming increasingly interdependent, raising the complexity level for chip architects as they work out exactly where that computing should be done and how to optimize it for shrinking energy margins. At a fundamental level, there is now more data to compute and more urgency in getting results. This situation has forced a rethinking of how much data should be moved, w... » read more

New Uses For AI


AI is being embedded into an increasing number of technologies that are commonly found inside most chips, and initial results show dramatic improvements in both power and performance. Unlike high-profile AI implementations, such as self-driving cars or natural language processing, much of this work flies well under the radar for most people. It generally takes the path of least disruption, b... » read more

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