Coloring Optical Signals For More Bandwidth In Data Centers


Copper cabling has been the workhorse for moving data inside of AI and HPC data centers, but fiber is nipping at its heels. Optics brings three possible bandwidth multipliers — wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), the use of different modes, and polarization. Each has a role in longer-distance optical links, but the tradeoffs are different in the data center. WDM appears poised to boost... » read more

What Do LLMs Want from Hardware


Figure 1: Noam Shazeer, Google Gemini vice president, presented this in his Hot Chips 2025 talk. Noam Shazeer is Google’s vice president of engineering for Gemini, their LLM competitor to ChatGPT. He talked recently at Hot Chips: “Predictions for the Next Phase of AI." He has worked on LLMs for a decade since inventing the transformer model in 2017. As his slide says, LLMs can take adv... » read more

IBM Power Processor, This One Goes to 11


Hot Chips 25 was held August 24-26 on the Stanford University campus again this year, with many exciting and interesting presentations. I’ve noticed an overall trend with more focus being placed on overall systems rather than the socket. As the conference name suggests, there’s a history of showcasing chips, but with the increased emphasis on AI and related large-scale computing, efficiency... » read more

Liquid Cooling, Meeting The Demands Of AI Data Centers


Many Porsche “purists” reflect forlornly upon the 1997, 5th generation, 996 version of the iconic 911 sports car. It was the first year of the water-cooled engine versions of the 911, which had previously been based on air-cooled engines since their entry into the market in 1964. The 911 was also the successor to the popular air-cooled 356. For over three decades, Porsche’s flagship 911 w... » read more

New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency


Leading AI systems designs are migrating away from building the fastest AI processor possible, adopting a more balanced approach that involves highly specialized, heterogeneous compute elements, faster data movement, and significantly lower power. Part of this shift revolves around the adoption of chiplets in 2.5D/3.5D packages, which enable greater customization for different workloads and ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Design & IP Arm launched the Neoverse Compute Subsystems (CSS), pre-integrated and validated configurations of Arm Neoverse platform IP, at this week's Hot Chips conference. CSS helps streamline SoC designs for data centers and is optimized for an advanced 5nm process. The first generation of CSS (Neoverse CSS N2) is based on Arm’s Neoverse N2 platform. Core count is configurable (24 to ... » read more

Who Will Regulate Data Exchanges In Chiplets?


Scaling is still important when it comes to logic and low power, but it's no longer the main avenue for improving performance. What used to be a single chip, comprised of various IP blocks and components on a single SoC, is giving way to a heterogeneous collection of chiplets — at least for the big chipmakers and system companies at the leading edge. Chiplets are currently the best solutio... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive and mobility U.S. President Joe Biden announced the approval of $900 million in funding for a nationwide network of electrical vehicle charging stations in 35 states. The money is part of a multi-year, $7.5 billion plan to create 500,000 charging stations along federal highways. Industry executives told Reuters that remote human supervisors may be a permanent fixture of highly au... » read more

Will Big Competition Attract More Talent For IC Companies?


Google is hiring a chip packaging technologist. General Motors is seeking a wafer fabrication procurement specialist. Facebook Reality Labs wants a materials researcher with experience in photolithography and nanoimprint techniques. Recent job postings by tech and automotive giants are enough to worry any chip company executive struggling to attract talent. But what may seem at first like a ... » read more

ML Focus Shifting Toward Software


New machine-learning (ML) architectures continue to garner a huge amount of attention as the race continues to provide the most effective acceleration architectures for the cloud and the edge, but attention is starting to shift from the hardware to the software tools. The big question now is whether a software abstraction eventually will win out over hardware details in determining who the f... » read more

← Older posts