Featured

The Data Center Boom is Unsustainable

Featured, News & Analysis

What’s at stake?
The number of new data centers being built is outpacing incremental efforts at energy efficiency. As big-data applications scale workloads, cloud service providers and other hyperscalers can barely keep up with pandemic-driven demand for computing, storage and analytics. In the last quarter alone, the cloud sector is estimated to have grown by more than $50 billion. The data center business model of seemingly endless construction of server farms consuming ever-greater amounts of power is unsustainable.

Data Center Energy Puzzle

Featured, Truth & Consequences

By Ron Wilson

What’s at stake?
As use of the Web grows more intense — think of the difference between searching for a nice cat video vs. entering an immersive virtual-reality experience — and the demand spreads through the developing world, a rapid proliferation of huge cloud data centers is likely. But the energy consumption and environmental impacts of data centers could bring big and unwelcome changes to infrastructure, climate and quality of life as data centers spread into countries already challenged by power generation, water shortages and a warming climate.

As RISC-V Catches Tailwinds, Codasip Refreshes Ambition

Conversation, Featured

By Junko Yoshida

Refreshed by new blood on its senior executive team, Codasip, touting itself as “one of the top three, credible RISC-V companies,” is reintroducing itself. Spun out of its founder’s PhD thesis and decade-long research on how best to design new and better CPUs, Codasip is today a full-fledged RISC-V company, hot on the heels of RISC-V market leaders SiFive and Andes Technology.

Will Ford Build Ford Semiconductors?

Featured, News & Analysis

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
The pendulum is swinging back to a vertical-integration business model among system companies in smartphone and datacenter markets. Carmakers, which have long depended on Tier Ones to design various ECU boxes for adding features, will be next. Do these OEMs have the will, capital, talent and corporate culture to design big, differentiated SoCs for their next-generation vehicles internally?

Nvidia Bid for Arm: Was It Just a Lark?

Featured, Opinion

By Bolaji Ojo

The collapse last week of Nvidia Corp.’s proposed acquisition of semiconductor IP vendor Arm Plc surprised very few, but it still left us with (too) many questions, most of them unanswerable.

How did Nvidia wobble into such a quagmire and how can the industry avoid such in future? Nvidia paid a hefty price for the unconsummated deal. The company lost its $1.25 billion deposit, drew the ire of competitors and some of its own OEM customers, and injected unnecessary controversy into its operations. Nvidia will recover from the negative impacts of the deal and may have reaped some benefits, but was the plan worth the wasted time and resources?

Podcast: The European Chips Act Is a Political Pipe Dream, Lacks Focus

Featured, Podcast

There are several problems with the European Chips Act. They are characterised by a lack of focus that is manifested in many ways.

Lisa Su: The Making of a Legend

Featured, News & Analysis

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at Stake?
Lisa Su has masterminded a Steve Jobs-like turnaround at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, cementing her iconic status in the technology world. At only 52 years old and almost one decade into her tenure as president and CEO at AMD, the questions come up: What will she do for an encore and where else can she make an even greater contribution in the electronics industry?

AV Hearing Sparks More Questions than Answers

Featured, Opinion

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Last week’s congressional hearing on autonomous vehicles (AV) exposed the limited knowledge among lawmakers on what automated vehicles are, let alone differences between AVs and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) — which look like disclaimers in the fine print for most people. The hearing could have used more discussion to clarify complex AV issues and elevate the debate beyond the talking points of special-interest groups.

In Intel’s Crisis, a Glimpse of TSMC’s Quandary

TSMC Capex Splurge Will Stoke Glut and Other Problems

Featured, News & Analysis

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at Stake?
TSMC will jack up capex up to 46% this year, building on huge increases over the last four years. Other chipmakers and foundries are racing to add new capacity, too. This is an extraordinary moment in the industry’s history and cooler heads need to prevail before the technology world ends up with manufacturing capacity surpluses that may take many years to absorb with indeterminable costs and other damages to the ecosystem. As the No. 1 global foundry, TSMC should provide the leadership required now by taking a leaf from its founder’s playbook; do not build to speculative demand.

The Unknowable Metaverse

Featured, Truth & Consequences

By Girish Mhatre

What’s at stake?
The Silicon Valley hype machine is revved up again over the Next Big Thing, and this time that thing is the metaverse. But what is it, and when will it be here? Is the metaverse an inevitable, synergistic confluence of the irresistible forces of social connection, experimentation, entertainment and, crucially, profit? We won’t know for decades, but the early explorations of metaverse concepts raise some interesting questions on the nature of reality.