Bridging Machine Learning’s Divide


There is a growing divide between those researching [getkc id="305" comment="machine learning"] (ML) in the cloud and those trying to perform inferencing using limited resources and power budgets. Researchers are using the most cost-effective hardware available to them, which happens to be GPUs filled with floating point arithmetic units. But this is an untenable solution for embedded infere... » read more

Privacy Is In Retreat


It was always a given that when you were online, you're in public. The deceptive piece is that your online activities can appear very distant from your physical location. You might be shopping from the comfort and seeming privacy of your living room, or texting on your smart phone before you get out of bed. This created a lot of buzz initially, but over the past year or so the level of paran... » read more

The Road To Autonomy


Visions of autonomous driving were everywhere at CES 2018 in Las Vegas and the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Still, while there is progress in the technology, it will be years before the average motorist can get a fully autonomous vehicle. Advanced driver-assistance systems are gaining in complexity and scope, representing steps toward automated driving. At CES 2018, ... » read more

Data Buffering’s Role Grows


Data buffering is gaining ground as a way to speed up the processing of increasingly large quantities of data. In simple terms, a data buffer is an area of physical [getkc id="22" kc_name="memory"] storage that temporarily stores data while it is being moved from one place to another. This becomes increasingly necessary in data centers, autonomous vehicles, and for [getkc id="305" kc_name=... » read more

Turning Down The Power


Chip and system designers are giving greater weight to power issues these days. But will they inevitably hit a wall in accounting for ultra-low-power considerations? Performance, power, and area are the traditional attributes in chip design. Area was originally the main priority, with feature sizes constantly shrinking according to Moore's Law. Performance was in the saddle for many years. M... » read more

Machine Learning’s Growing Divide


[getkc id="305" kc_name="Machine learning"] is one of the hottest areas of development, but most of the attention so far has focused on the cloud, algorithms and GPUs. For the semiconductor industry, the real opportunity is in optimizing and packaging solutions into usable forms, such as within the automotive industry or for battery-operated consumer or [getkc id="76" kc_name="IoT"] products. ... » read more

The Future Of AI Is In Materials


I had the pleasure of hosting an eye-opening presentation and Q&A with Dr. Jeff Welser of IBM at a recent Applied Materials technical event in San Francisco. Dr. Welser is Vice President and Director of IBM Research's Almaden lab in San Jose. He made the case that the future of hardware is AI. At Applied Materials we believe that advanced materials engineering holds the keys to unlocking... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Security Security researchers identified a major exploit of the "speculative execution" technique used to optimize performance in modern processors. The flaws allow an attacker to read sensitive information in the system's memory such as passwords, encryption keys, or sensitive information open in applications, according to Google's Jann Horn. Multiple researchers discovered the issues indepen... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Christopher Rolland, an analyst at Susquehanna International, expects to see more merger and acquisition activity in the IC industry heading into 2018. “M&A activity slowed in 2017, but the year is going out with a bang!” Rolland said in a recent research note. Towards the end of 2017, for example, Broadcom made a bid for Qualcomm, while Marvell announced intent to buy Cavium. ... » read more

Preparing For Bigger Changes Ahead


The semiconductor industry has undergone a fundamental shift over the past year, and it's one that will redefine chipmaking over the next decade or more. While the focus is still on building the fastest, lowest-power devices, whether that's by shrinking features or packaging them into blazing-fast 2.5D or fan-out configurations, these devices are being customized for specific use cases much ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →