Interconnects Emerge As Key Concern For Performance


Interconnects are becoming increasingly challenging to design, implement and test as the amount of data skyrockets and the ability to move that data through denser arrays of compute elements and memories becomes more difficult. The idea of an interconnect is rather simple, but ask two people what constitutes an interconnect and you're likely to get very different answers. Interconnects are e... » read more

All-in-One Vs. Point Tools For Security


Security remains an urgent concern for builders of any system that might tempt attackers, but designers find themselves faced with a bewildering array of security options. Some of those are point solutions for specific pieces of the security puzzle. Others bill themselves as all-in-one, where the whole puzzle filled in. Which approach is best depends on the resources you have available and y... » read more

The Road To Post-Quantum Cryptography


Quantum computing offers the promise of tremendous leaps in processing power over current digital computers. But for the public-key cryptography algorithms used today for e-commerce, mobile payments, media streaming, digital signatures and more, quantum computing represents an existential event. Quantum computers may be able to break the widely used RSA and ECC (Elliptic-Curve Cryptography) alg... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 26


Cadence's Paul McLellan shares some highlights from Hot Chips, including the massive growth in deep learning models, the basics of designing neural network models, and challenges involved in different approaches. Mentor's Colin Walls explores memory management units, its job of translating an address used by the CPU to an alternative address, and why this remapping is desirable and useful. ... » read more

The Challenge Of Keeping AI Systems Current


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss AI and its move to the edge with Steven Woo, vice president of enterprise solutions technology and distinguished inventor at Rambus; Kris Ardis, executive director at Maxim Integrated; Steve Roddy, vice president of Arm's Products Learning Group; and Vinay Mehta, inference technical marketing manager at Flex Logix. What follows are excerpts of that ... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 19


Rambus' Scott Best digs into some of the most sophisticated attacks used to target and compromise security chips, such as laser voltage probing, focused ion beam editing, reverse engineering, and NVM extraction, and ways to counter them. Synopsys' Chris Clark proposes a way to identify problems earlier and better ensure safety and reliability in automotive SoCs by moving from a linear develo... » read more

From Cloud To Cloudlets


Cloudlets, or mini-clouds, are starting to roll out closer to the sources of data in an effort to reduce latency and improve overall processing performance. But as this approach gains steam, it also is creating some new challenges involving data distribution, storage and security. The growing popularity of distributed clouds is a recognition that the cloud model has limitations. Sending the ... » read more

Scaling AI/ML Training Performance With HBM2E Memory


In my April SemiEngineering Low Power-High Performance blog, I wrote: “Today, AI/ML neural network training models can exceed 10 billion parameters, soon it will be over 100 billion.” “Soon” didn’t take long to arrive. At the end of May, OpenAI unveiled a new 175-billion parameter GPT-3 language model. This represented a more that 100X jump over the size of GPT-2’s 1.5 billion param... » read more

Preparing For A Barrage Of Physical Effects


Advancements in 3D transistors and packaging continue to enable better power and performance in a given footprint, but they also require more attention to physical effects stemming from both increased density and vertical stacking. Even in planar chips developed at 3nm, it will be more difficult to build both thin and thick oxide devices, which will have an impact on everything from power to... » read more

Power And Performance Optimization At 7/5/3nm


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power optimization with Oliver King, CTO at Moortec; João Geada, chief technologist at Ansys; Dino Toffolon, senior vice president of engineering at Synopsys; Bryan Bowyer, director of engineering at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Kiran Burli, senior director of marketing for Arm's Physical Design Group; Kam Kittrell, senior product management group d... » read more

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