Machine Learning Shifts More Work to FPGAs, SoCs


A wave of machine-learning-optimized chips is expected to begin shipping in the next few months, but it will take time before data centers decide whether these new accelerators are worth adopting and whether they actually live up to claims of big gains in performance. There are numerous reports that silicon custom-designed for machine learning will deliver 100X the performance of current opt... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Tariffs The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has released a list of $200 billion worth of Chinese imports that will be subject to tariffs. These actions are on top of another set of tariffs, which were put in place. The additional tariffs will be effective starting Sept. 24, and initially will be in the amount of 10%. Starting Jan. 1, 2019, the level of the additional tariffs wi... » read more

The Big Blur


Chip companies, research houses, foundries—and more recently large systems companies—have been developing alternative technologies to continue scaling power and performance. It's still not obvious which of those will win, let alone survive, or what they will do to the economics of developing chips. For more than five decades, the biggest concern was scaling devices in order to save money... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 19


Applied Materials' David Thompson shares the new DARPA program that is focused on using correlated electrons to develop a new type of switch with quantum effects, potentially leading to unprecedented switching speeds. Mentor's Joe Hupcey III argues that for the most effective formal analysis, assertions should be as simple as possible and shares some tips on decomposing big assertions. Ca... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab/mask manufacturing An alliance of companies have formed the Center for Deep Learning in Electronics Manufacturing (CDLe). NuFlare, Mycronic and D2S have established the San Jose, Calif.-based center to advance the state-of-the-art in deep learning for its industry-specific applications. Imec.xpand, an early-stage and growth fund that is initiated by Imec, has closed its first fund at 11... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A Intel acquired NetSpeed Systems, a network-on-a-chip and interconnect fabric IP and tool provider. Founded in 2011, the San Jose-based company recently put a focus on interconnects designed with AI applications in mind. Intel has cast the acquisition as a way to tie a number of its other technologies together. The team will join Intel's Silicon Engineering Group. Intel has been a NetSp... » read more

The Security Penalty


It's not clear if Meltdown, Spectre and Foreshadow caused actual security breaches, but they did prompt big processor vendors like Intel, Arm, AMD and IBM to fix these vulnerabilities before they were made public by Google's Project Zero. While all of this may make data center managers and consumers feel better in one respect, it has created a level of panic of a different sort. For decades,... » read more

Hybrid Memory


Gary Bronner, senior vice president of Rambus Labs, talks about the future of DRAM scaling, why one type of memory won’t solve all needs, and what the pros and cons are of different memories. https://youtu.be/R0hhDx2Fb7Q » read more

People Vs. Self-Driving Cars


If you’re a screenwriter—or a car salesman—you’re already thinking of ways to write non-sci-fi self-driving cars into a movie script. Automobiles have been integral to the plots of gritty noir crime movies, heist flicks, romantic comedies, and obviously, road movies. What's clear is the self-driving car won’t be the ideal getaway vehicle anymore, particularly if there is no steerin... » read more

Intel’s Next Move


Gadi Singer, vice president and general manager of Intel's Artificial Intelligence Products Group, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about Intel's vision for deep learning and why the company is looking well beyond the x86 architecture and one-chip solutions. SE: What's changing on the processor side? Singer: The biggest change is the addition of deep learning and neural ne... » read more

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