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AI Forces 'Interconnects' Outside the Box

AI Forces ‘Interconnects’ Outside the Box

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Ai is disrupting the electronics industry. Increasingly diversified AI workloads are triggering seismic changes in the architecture of chips, boxes and data centers. Synopsys explains how AI is shortening PCIe spec cycles and discusses the role of next-generation interconnects in AI-driven data centers. 

The tech industry understands AI’s voracious appetite for more data, computing power and memory, and is coping — sort of. But so far not discussed enough are “interconnects” inside a box that have to migrate outside the box.

“In the world of interconnects, we are beginning to hit the laws of semiconductor physics,” said Manmeet Walia, executive director, mixed-signal PHY IP, Synopsys, in a recent interview with the Ojo-Yoshida Report. In contrast, “with compute, you can still go faster by leaning on Moore’s Law. Or, if you can’t go any faster, you can start parallelizing processing.”

Interconnect speed is now clearly trailing compute, according to Walia. Worse, doubling the bandwidth of an interconnect – from 64 gigabits to 128 gigabits per second, for example – does not just double complexity. It introduces “an exponential increase in complexity,” he noted.

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Microsoft's CoPilot+ puts Intel on a knife-edge

Microsoft’s CoPilot+ Puts Intel on a Knife-Edge

By Peter Clarke

What’s at stake:
There was a time when Computex in Taiwan, the land of the PC motherboard manufacturers, was a slightly tired annual event. But not in 2024, the year of the advent of the AI-enabled personal computer – or as Microsoft would brand it, the CoPilot+ PC. This year there are many parts in motion and that means there are likely to be big changes in the winners and losers in the supporting semiconductor cast of characters.

In the mid-1990s when Robin Saxby, then CEO of processor IP licensor ARM, told me that his company’s technology was in 70 percent of all mobile phones I realized that startup company ARM had become a global player. The current CEO, Rene Haas, is claiming that ARM could claim more than 50 percent of the Windows PC market by 2029. If that happens it will likely mean that Intel’s time as a global player is over. That is unless Intel itself becomes a maker of PC processors based on the ARM architecture.

It could happen.

Read More »Microsoft’s CoPilot+ Puts Intel on a Knife-Edge

ST & Wolfspeed: A Tale of Two SiC Suppliers

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The contrast between ST and Wolfspeed couldn’t be starker. Did Wolfspeed, focused intently on leading the transition from 6- to 8-inch SiC wafers, underestimate Chinese wafer makers? Or, too busy satisfying multi-year wafer contracts with SiC device vendors such as Infineon and Renesas, did Wolfspeed fail to see that profitability in the business has already moved on from wafers to devices? We pick the Yole Group’s brain to learn what ST has done comparatively better.

STMicroelectronics last week unveiled its plan for a new 8-inch SiC manufacturing facility in Catania, Italy. That site will become an integrated hub for ST’s comprehensive SiC operations, from wafers to testing and packaging devices.

This move is monumental.

Above all, it paves ST’s path to become, over the long run, a genuine leader on the SiC market.

Read More »ST & Wolfspeed: A Tale of Two SiC Suppliers
AI Sends AMD and Lisa Su Back to the Drawing Board

AI Sends AMD and Lisa Su Back to the Drawing Board

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?

AMD under Lisa Su is facing a pack of even more formidable foes than it did when it was slugging it out with Intel in the microprocessor market. Artificial intelligence has redrawn the competitive landscape and AMD is again in a disadvantageous position, playing catchup. Can it maintain the sales and valuation growth momentum created by CEO Su or will it spend many more years again fighting to become a viable player in the AI market?

Lisa Su cannot take victory laps.

Despite obvious winnings, the AMD chairman, president and CEO, cannot afford to take a break from the task of revitalizing the semiconductor supplier she has now led for 10 years.

On Monday, Su was in Taiwan announcing the launch of AMD’s newest artificial intelligence (AI) processors and explaining its strategy for taking on Nvidia Corp. in the battle for dominance of the emerging market.

It’s a story the market is eager to understand following the massive breakout of AI and the emergence of Nvidia as the leading vendor serving data centers, hyperscalers, cloud services vendors and other manufacturers in the sector. The question Su cannot yet answer, though, is how AMD will fare in this new competitive environment where it faces big and equally thirsty competitors.

Read More »AI Sends AMD and Lisa Su Back to the Drawing Board
The ‘Ideal’ EV: Cheaper with Less SiC?

The ‘Ideal’ EV: Cheaper with Less SiC?

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
As many automakers gravitate toward Silicon Carbide (SiC) technology from silicon-based power electronics, is there room for a startup to propose a third way?

Ideal Power, the Austin, Texas-based inventor of B-TRAN, a bidirectional, bipolar junction transistor semiconductor technology, believes that its silicon-based power semiconductors can support EVs, renewables and electrification without the expense of Silicon Carbide.

CEO Daniel Brdar, in an interview with the Ojo-Yoshida Report, claimed that B-TRAN’s unique double-sided bidirectional AC switch delivers “substantial performance improvements” over conventional power semiconductors such as Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) and Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET). 

The near-term market for B-TRAN-based power switches includes transmission, distribution and protection circuits such as solid-state circuit breakers, relays and contactors in renewable energy, energy storage systems, microgrids and electric vehicle charging, according to the company.

But there is no denying that the electronic vehicle is Ideal Power’s big kahuna. 

Read More »The ‘Ideal’ EV: Cheaper with Less SiC?

In SDVs, IBM Has Honda’s Back

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The emergence of software-defined vehicles (SDV) compels OEMs to rethink their long-term software and hardware development strategy for future vehicles.

The complexity of architecting an SDV is overwhelming, to say the least, for most carmakers and tier ones.

The challenge of making an SDV software-defined isn’t just about adding communication links that enable over-the-air updates. Nor is it about beefing up the car’s central compute capability and reducing its ECU population.

The whole vehicle architecture has to be redefined to enable the [zonal] boxes inside a car to communicate, share resources and run different workloads.

This is akin to the evolution of a data center, in which all elements of the infrastructure, including networking, storage, CPU and security, are virtualized through abstraction, thus allowing resource pooling and automation to deliver infrastructure as a service.

Read More »In SDVs, IBM Has Honda’s Back
It’s a Multimodal World, After All

It’s a Multimodal World, After All

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The new frontier in AI is in multimodal models such as CLIP and Stable Diffusion. Because humans interact with the world through both vision and language, AI researchers believe machines, too, need multimodal channels.  Can something like LLaVA foster a “general-purpose assistant” that effectively follows multimodal vision-and-language instructions aligned with human intent? If so, at what cost?

We live in a tumultuous time.

Business reporters are often pressed to investigate commercial and technological advancements almost immediately after the scientific community breaks new ground. This is particularly true in the field of artificial intelligence.

With little time either for reflection or examination, reporters take scientists’ word on the Next Big Thing, reducing AI journalism to little better than stenography.  Remember when its promoters kept saying the autonomous vehicle is “just around the corner.”

Corporations, obliged to become AI prospectors, now face a similar dilemma. Like the 49ers of the Gold Rush, the first priority for a company hoping to strike it rich, is to stake a claim, only worrying afterward whether its particular AI investment is the mother lode or a dry hole.

Clouding our judgement further is the exponential growth of Nvidia. Money talks.

Read More »It’s a Multimodal World, After All
Chip Wars: How Far Will America Go to Win?

Chip Wars: How Far Will America Go to Win?

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?

America is taking the gloves off in its battle with China over semiconductor innovations and manufacturing. The hostilities have moved beyond advanced processes and leading-edge chip production equipment. This is geopolitics writ large, a fight for dominance, economically and politically, of one entity by the other. Is the US willing to inflict pains on American and allied enterprises to achieve its objectives of forcing China to “play fair” and bow to America’s “supremacy”?

The Imperial Presidency struck again.

Export licenses that the Biden administration issued to Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. for sales of semiconductors to Huawei Technology Inc. were scratched on May 7, signifying a widening of its ongoing rift with China. It is a presidential election year in the US and contentious issues – such as trade with China – are fair game. Technology enterprises at home and above should brace themselves.

Read More »Chip Wars: How Far Will America Go to Win?