Customized Micro-Benchmarks For HW/SW Performance


Raw performance used to be the main focus of benchmarks, but they may have outlived their usefulness for many applications. Dana McCarty, vice president of sales and marketing for AI Inference Products at Flex Logix, talks about why companies need to develop and utilize their own specific models to accurately gauge hardware and software performance, which can be slowed by bottlenecks in I/O and... » read more

Making Sense Of New Edge-Inference Architectures


New edge-inference machine-learning architectures have been arriving at an astounding rate over the last year. Making sense of them all is a challenge. To begin with, not all ML architectures are alike. One of the complicating factors in understanding the different machine-learning architectures is the nomenclature used to describe them. You’ll see terms like “sea-of-MACs,” “systolic... » read more

Edge-Inference Architectures Proliferate


First part of two parts. The second part will dive into basic architectural characteristics. The last year has seen a vast array of announcements of new machine-learning (ML) architectures for edge inference. Unburdened by the need to support training, but tasked with low latency, the devices exhibit extremely varied approaches to ML inference. “Architecture is changing both in the comp... » read more

CEO Outlook: 2021


The new year will be one of significant transition and innovation for the chip industry, but there are so many new applications and market segments that broad generalizations are becoming less meaningful. Unlike in years past, where sales of computers or smart phones were a good indication of how the chip industry would fare, end markets have both multiplied and splintered, greatly increasin... » read more

Cerfe Labs: Spin-On Memory


Arm has spun off one of its more intriguing semiconductor research projects, a new non-volatile memory type called correlated electron materials RAM (CeRAM) that holds the potential to substantially reduce the cost of memory in everything from edge devices to high-performance computing. Headed by two former Arm Research insiders — Eric Hennenhoefer, who will serve as CEO and Greg Yeric, wh... » read more

Security At The Edge


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss security at the edge with Steven Woo, vice president of enterprise solutions technology and distinguished inventor at Rambus, Kris Ardis, executive director at Maxim Integrated; and Steve Roddy, vice president of Arm's Products Learning Group. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To view part one of this discussion, click here. Part two i... » read more

Deals That Change The Chip Industry


Nvidia's pending $40 billion acquisition of Arm is expected to have a big impact on the chip world, but it will take years before the effects of this deal are fully understood. More such deals are expected over the next couple of years due to several factors — there is a fresh supply of startups with innovative technology, interest rates are low, and market caps and stock prices of buyers ... » read more

Integrity Problems For Edge Devices


Battery-powered edge devices need to save every picojoule of energy they can, which often means running at very low voltages. This can create signal and power integrity issues normally seen at the very latest technology nodes. But because these tend to be lower-volume, lower-cost devices, developers often cannot afford to perform the same level of analysis on these devices. Noise can come in... » read more

Nvidia To Buy Arm For $40B


Nvidia inked a deal with Softbank to buy Arm for $40 billion, combining the No. 1 AI/ML GPU maker with the No. 1 processor IP company. Assuming the deal wins regulatory approval, the combination of these two companies will create a powerhouse in the AI/ML world. Nvidia's GPUs are the go-to platform for training algorithms, while Arm has a broad portfolio of AI/ML processor cores. Arm also ha... » read more

AI & IP In Edge Computing For Faster 5G And The IoT


Edge computing, which is the concept of processing and analyzing data in servers closer to the applications they serve, is growing in popularity and opening new markets for established telecom providers, semiconductor startups, and new software ecosystems. It’s brilliant how technology has come together over the last several decades to enable this new space starting with Big Data and the idea... » read more

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