By Ron Wilson

What’s at stake:
There is growing discussion of AI in chip design. Could this be mainly marketing, or could it reflect a new weapon in the EDA armory? If the latter, AI could take on some of the most intractable challenges of designing multi-die systems.

Global industry is placing huge bets that artificial intelligence will create a step-function increase in productivity. From customer service to materials handling, from bond trading to medical research, this faith thrives across a broad domain. But what exactly do these faithful mean when they say AI? There are many species in that phylum. And how exactly will AI — demonstrably excellent at pattern recognition and parlor games, but with fundamental limitations when it comes to accuracy and predictability — make knowledge workers more productive?

The EDA industry, with its witheringly complex tasks, massive data sets, vastly skilled practitioners, and utter intolerance of error, offers an excellent laboratory for exploring these questions. The emerging field of high-performance multi-die modules in particular includes some of the most formidable challenges. And among the tasks in this area, the challenge of multi-physics analysis of modules — analyzing the interacting electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical properties of a module design — can be most daunting. This may be a great place to ask our questions.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The CHIPS and Science Act has created the opportunity — and federal subsidies — for semiconductor companies both big and small to return chip production capacity to the United States. But thus far, the Department of Commerce’s decision-making process has been shrouded in mystery. The latest announcement of Rogue Valley Microdevices getting the grant gives us a glimpse into the federal government’s inner workings.

Without the power of major market share, what does it take to horn into federal funding action?  Likely ingredients include chutzpah, street cred, and experience in the technology biz. These qualities exist emphatically at Rogue Valley Microdevices (Medford, Oregon), a pure-play MEMS foundry founded by Jessica Gomez, once a lab operator at Standard Microsystems (SMSC) in Long Island, New York. Gomez worked at a small aging fab — attached to the then SMSC’s headquarters — where the company made MEMS inkjet printheads. 

Gomez’s journey started with a local community college science degree. She gained first-hand operational experience at SMSC and went on to run a foundry service at a short-lived MEMS company in California. This background convinced Gomez that she could establish her own MEMS foundry. She launched Rogue Valley Microdevices (RVM) in 2003.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
TinyML in embedded systems can be implemented many ways, often by leveraging beefed-up MCUs, DSPs, AI accelerators and Neural Processing Units (NPUs). The lingering dilemma is how best to develop embedded systems with machine learning that could fit in the budget of TinyML.

Almost every new technology overheats its industry’s imagination, followed by an announcement flood, promising new tools, software and hardware – all of which fuels dreams of rapid market growth and big volume sales.

Then, reality.

TinyML has reached this moment.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
The concept of software-defined vehicles for whole-vehicle architecture is the automotive industry’s hot topic. But SDVs, for most OEMs, are still in early development. Nonetheless, “software-defined sensors” appear to have traction among carmakers. Why?

Software-defined sensors are going commercial way ahead of software-defined vehicles. This is because OEMs are now required to develop cars compliant with federally mandated Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) rules, including Pedestrian AEB in low light.

Carmakers must pass tests of minimum performance criteria and meet a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) timeline.

OEMs are seeking an answer in “software-defined” sensors, largely because it might enable them to pass AEB tests without adding new sensor hardware such as thermal cameras or lidars.

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.

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.