tag: NPU

A Buyers Guide To An NPU
By Paul Karazuba - 22 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

Choosing the right AI inference NPU (Neural Processing Unit) is a critical decision for a chip architect. There’s a lot at stake because as the AI landscape constantly changes, the choices will impact overall product cost, performance, and long-term viability. There are myriad options regarding system architecture and IP suppliers, and this can be daunting for even the most seasoned semicondu... » read more

(Vision) Transformers: Rise Of The Chimera
By Jon Bunting - 20 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

It’s 2023 and transformers are having a moment. No, I’m not talking about the latest installment of the Transformers movie franchise, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts"; I’m talking about the deep learning model architecture class, transformers, that is fueling anticipation, excitement, fear, and investment in AI. Transformers are not so new in the world of AI anymore; they were first ... » read more

Programming Processors In Heterogeneous Architectures
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

Programming processors is becoming more complicated as more and different types of processing elements are included in the same architecture. While systems architects may revel in the number of options available for improving power, performance, and area, the challenge of programming functionality and making it all work together is turning out to be a major challenge. It involves multiple pr... » read more

An Ideal Always-Sensing Subsystem Architecture
By Paul Karazuba - 25 May, 2023 - Comments: 0

Always-sensing cameras are a relatively new method for users to interact with their smartphones, home appliances, and other consumer devices. Like always-listening audio-based Siri and Alexa, always-sensing cameras enable a seamless, more natural user experience. Through continuous sampling and analyzing visual data, always-sensing enables use cases such as: “Find a face” detection for... » read more

Can Compute-In-Memory Bring New Benefits To Artificial Intelligence Inference?
By Paul Karazuba - 27 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

Compute-in-memory (CIM) is not necessarily an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution; rather, it is a memory management solution. CIM could bring advantages to AI processing by speeding up the multiplication operation at the heart of AI model execution. However, for that to be successful, an AI processing system would need to be explicitly architected to use CIM. The change would entail a shift ... » read more

Nightmare Fuel: The Hazards Of ML Hardware Accelerators
By Steve Roddy - 13 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

A major design challenge facing numerous silicon design teams in 2023 is building the right amount of machine learning (ML) performance capability into today’s silicon tape out in anticipation of what the state of the art (SOTA) ML inference models will look like in 2026 and beyond when that silicon will be used in devices in volume production. Given the continuing rapid rate of change in mac... » read more

Looking Beyond TOPS/W: How To Really Compare NPU Performance
By Paul Karazuba - 23 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

There is a lot more to understanding the true capabilities of an AI engine beyond TOPS per watt. A rather arbitrary measure of the number of operations of an engine per unit of power, the TOPS/W metric completely misses the point that a single operation on one engine may accomplish more useful work than a multitude of operations on another engine. In any case, TOPS/W is by no means the only spe... » read more

New Neural Processors Address Emerging Neural Networks
By Gordon Cooper - 05 May, 2022 - Comments: 0

It’s been ten years since AlexNet, a deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN) model running on GPUs, displaced more traditional vision processing algorithms to win the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Competition (ILSVRC). AlexNet, and its successors, provided significant improvements in object classification accuracy at the cost of intense computational complexity and large da... » read more

Growth Spurred By Negatives
By Brian Bailey - 27 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 0

The success and health of the semiconductor industry is driven by the insatiable appetite for increasingly complex devices that impact every aspect of our lives. The number of design starts for the chips used in those devices drives the EDA industry. But at no point in history have there been as many market segments driving innovation as there are today. Moreover, there is no indication this... » read more

AI/ML Workloads Need Extra Security
By Bryon Moyer - 15 Nov, 2021 - Comments: 0

The need for security is pervading all electronic systems. But given the growth in data-center machine-learning computing, which deals with extremely valuable data, some companies are paying particular attention to handling that data securely. All of the usual data-center security solutions must be brought to bear, but extra effort is needed to ensure that models and data sets are protected ... » read more

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