U.S. restricts GPU sales to China; Renesas and Cadence make acquisitions; PE invests in data centers; aging and 6G
The U.S. government placed new restrictions on sales of GPUs to China that could be used for high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and other advanced applications. NVIDIA said in an SEC filing Wednesday that officials told the company it must seek an export license for sales to China or Russia of its A100 and H100 chips, and any system that includes those chips or the A100X. NVIDIA noted it does not sell products to customers in Russia. According to the filing, the license is meant to “address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user.’” AMD reportedly said similar restrictions will impact sales of its MI250 chip.
Arm filed suit against Qualcomm, claiming the latter’s recent acquisition of Nuvia violates license agreements and infringes on Arm’s trademark. According to one report, Arm claims its approval was needed before designs developed under Nuvia’s license agreements could be transferred to Qualcomm.
Renesas will acquire the India-based fabless semiconductor company Steradian, which sells 4D imaging imaging radar products. “Radar is an indispensable technology for ADAS, which uses a complex combination of various sensors,” said Hidetoshi Shibata, Renesas’ president and CEO. “The addition of Steradian’s superb radar technology and engineering talent will allow us to extend our leadership in the automotive segments. We will also leverage their technology for industrial applications to drive our mid- to long-term business growth in both segments.” Renesas also announced it is developing new Si-IGBTs (Silicon Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors) that will be available next year.
Cadence acquired OpenEye Scientific Software, a company that focuses on computational molecular design. The deal is valued at about $500 million. In a news release, Cadence said the transaction “will allow pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to benefit from more robust drug discovery solutions that combine OpenEye’s innovative molecular modeling and simulation software solutions for drug discovery with Cadence’s algorithmic and solver expertise, efficient large data management infrastructure, and leading AI/ML and cloud solutions.”
Siemens said its Questa Verification IP tool now supports the Compute Express Link (CXL) 3.0 protocol for high-performance computing applications. “By offering early support for the new CXL 3.0 protocol, Siemens can help customers differentiate and win in highly competitive HPC markets around the world,” said Mark Olen, product management director, IC Verification Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Both Codasip and Imperas announced participation in Intel’s Pathfinder for RISC-V development program. Imperas designed an integrated reference model and simulator as a fixed platform kit for the professional edition of the program, while Codasip will make its 32-bit L31 core available. Rupert Baines, Codasip’s chief marketing officer, said the program’s “demonstrable commitment to RISC-V will benefit the entire RISC-V ecosystem.” Simon Davidmann, Imperas’ CEO, said the program not only “helps the design process with a ‘shift-left’ for early software development, it enables the entire industry to innovate with RISC-V and accelerate the time-to-volume schedules.”
Private equity firms poured more money into data centers in the midst of what is already a record year for such investments. Axios says the trend is tied to data centers’ predictable cash flows and competition for infrastructure investment opportunities.
Could 6G technology transform the process of aging? Two researchers imagined a world in the not-to-distant future filled with exoskeletons and other devices enabled by the Internet of Senses. Read more here.
Sep. 5-6, DVCon, Bangalore, India.
Sep. 8, ARC Processor Summit, Santa Clara, CA.
Sep. 8, 4th Panel Level Packaging Consortium Symposium, Berlin, Germany.
Sep. 11-16, International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (ICSCRM), Davos, Switzerland.
Sep. 13, Women in Semiconductor Hardware (WISH) Conference, Santa Clara, CA.
Sep. 13-14, Edge AI Summit, Santa Clara, CA.
Sep. 13-15, AI Hardware Summit, Santa Clara, CA.
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