What’s Next With Computing?


At the recent IEDM conference, Jeff Welser, vice president and lab director at IBM Research Almaden, sat down to discuss artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing and supercomputing with Semiconductor Engineering. Here are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where is high-end computing going? Welser: We are seeing lots of different systems start to come up. First of all,... » read more

Chipmakers Look To New Materials


Graphene, the wonder material rediscovered in 2004, and a host of other two-dimensional materials are gaining ground in manufacturing semiconductors as silicon’s usefulness begins to fade. And while there are a number of compounds in use already, such as gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, and silicon carbide, those materials generally are being confined to specific niche applications. Tran... » read more

Pushing DRAM’s Limits


If humans ever do create a genuinely self-aware artificial intelligence, it may well exhibit the frustration of waiting for data arrive. The access bandwidth of DRAM-based computer memory has improved by a factor of 20x over the past two decades. Capacity increased 128x during the same period. But latency improved only 1.3x, according to Kevin Chang, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon Universit... » read more

3D Neuromorphic Architectures


Matrix multiplication is a critical operation in conventional neural networks. Each node of the network receives an input signal, multiplies it by some predetermined weight, and passes the result to the next layer of nodes. While the nature of the signal, the method used to determine the weights, and the desired result will all depend on the specific application, the computational task is simpl... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools and test Four former employees at Applied Materials were charged by the U.S. for allegedly trying to steal the company’s own fab tool technology designs, according to a report from Bloomberg and others. The former employees were allegedly trying to sell the technology to a Chinese startup that would compete against Applied, according to the report. The former employees--Liang C... » read more

State Of The IoT


The Internet of Things represents many things to many people, and many of them are not good. For some it is either a laughingstock or a punching bag. For IT, it is a subject of derision because securing all connected devices at the edge is a nightmare. But in all cases, the general consensus is that the IoT has failed to live up to expectations and a level of hype not seen since the dot-com ... » read more

Quantum Madness


The race is on to commercialize quantum computing for everything from autonomous vehicles to supercomputers for hire. IBM has been working on a 50-qubit computer. Intel and QuTech, its Dutch research partner, showed off a 17-qubit test chip last month. And Alphabet, Google's parent company, is developing a 20-qubit computer. These numbers sound paltry compared to the billions of transistors ... » read more

The Next Phase Of Machine Learning


Machine learning is all about doing complex calculations on huge volumes of data with increasing efficiency, and with a growing stockpile of success stories it has rapidly evolved from a rather obscure computer science concept into the go-to method for everything from facial recognition technology to autonomous cars. [getkc id="305" kc_name="Machine learning"] can apply to every corporate fu... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Finance Automile, an Internet of Things company involved in field-service businesses, has received $34 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $47 million. Existing investors Dawn Capital, Point Nine Capital, SaaStr Fund, and Salesforce Ventures also participated in the new round. Automile will use the money on marketing, product developmen... » read more

New Materials For Computing


The U.S. Department of Energy rolled out a new program to develop materials for "extreme conditions" for high-performance computing, setting the stage for much more mobile versions of AI and machine learning. This effort, if successful, has interesting implications on a number of levels. For one, the DOE's mandate includes everything from energy security to weaponry, and high-performance com... » read more

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