Category: Integrated Circuits

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SambaNova Emerges From Stealth With Record-Breaking AI System

SambaNova-DataScale-AI

EE Times – SambaNova, one of the AI chip startup “unicorns,” has emerged from stealth mode after three years to announce its first product, a system-level AI accelerator for hyperscale and enterprise data centers and high performance computing (HPC) applications. SambaNova’s business model includes selling various configurations of the DataScale rack-based system, as well as renting them out for a monthly subscription in an offering the company calls “Dataflow-as-a-service”.

Founded in Palo Alto, California in 2017, SambaNova has been in stealth mode until now, though the company has released some details about its “software defined hardware” chip architecture. The startup has raised $456 million in three rounds of funding to date, and is reportedly valued at more than $2.5 billion.

DataScale is built on SambaNova’s Cardinal SN10 reconfigurable dataflow unit (RDU) chip. SambaNova still hasn’t given away much about this chip, with VP product Marshall Choy telling EE Times only that each chip offers “hundreds of teraflops and hundreds of megabytes of on-chip memory with direct access to terabytes of off-chip memories.” Choy argued that SambaNova’s customers, to an extent, do not care about the details of the chip; they are buying or renting the rack-based system which is SambaNova’s first product.

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The EV Market Is Accelerating

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T&D World – Will utilities lead, follow, or get out of the way?

The electric vehicle (EV) wave has come ashore. EV penetration is transitioning from its embryonic stage to the market growth stage across many transportation industry segments: cars, light trucks, buses, light commercial vehicles (LCVs), even Class-8 trucks (those more than 33,000 pounds). Although some segments are electrifying faster than others in terms of market penetration, overall this change will be the single most transformative event in the transportation sector since Henry Ford invented automobile assembly-line manufacturing. This change impacts everything — how far vehicles travel before requiring refueling (recharging in this case), the time recharging takes, where and when vehicles recharge — the very nature of replenishing the vehicle’s energy reserves. With this change comes opportunities for a new set of players to enter the marketplace, with the most impacted entity, the electric utility. These new market entrants will also bring new business models into a marketplace that is still evolving and will take some time to mature.

Over the past decade, following significant advances by the European Union (EU), upwards of two dozen investor-owned and municipal utilities in the United States have launched significant EV charging network infrastructure pilots. Initially, state governments drove these initiatives to achieve aggressive carbon reduction targets, but now EV charging capability is rapidly expanding into a national priority.

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IEEE Smart Grid Webinar – The Business Case for Utilities Supporting Public EV Charging

IEEE-Smart-Grid

IEEE Smart Grid Webinar – In this presentation, we will offer some fact-based thoughts to fuel utilities’ push toward developing sound EV strategies. Our suggestions are inspired by the actions of some of North America’s leading utilities, which we have had the privilege of assisting with data and strategic advice over the last few years. Done right, EVs prove to be good for utilities and their ratepayers.

Essentially, three value streams exist to support the case for utilities to support public EV charging. First, research has shown that light-duty EVs put downward pressure on electricity rates through increased demand requiring little incremental investment. Second, EV drivers are prime targets for other utility programs, because they are the most digitally engaged of all customers. Finally, leading utilities see new business opportunities from home, public, and workplace charging.

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Designers Can Synchronize Clocks Without External Oscillators Thanks to IEEE 1588

IEEE-1588

All About Circuits – The Updates to the IEEE 1588 standard protocol map out a low-cost method for synchronizing distributed clocks. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has approved a standard protocol to synchronize independent clocks running on a shared network. This will, in hopes, allow designers to perform accurate and precise measurements on control systems across a broad range of applications.

Designers that are involved in test and measurement for industrial automation or mobile communications can face challenges around maintaining synchronized data collection from multiple devices. Modern electronics that are separated by distance or have frequency rates varying over time and temperature will cause propagation delays that lead to unsynchronized timing clocks.

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What Makes 5G So Fast? – (All About Circuits)

Telecommunications-Speeds

(All About Circuits) – With 5G rolling out more quickly as we approach 2021, it may be helpful to touch on the key technologies that make 5G such a speedy success.

In a recent article, we discussed the basics of 5G technology—a discussion that is no longer in the realm of the hypothetical with 5G now being deployed in practice. One of the key talking points of 5G, at least from the consumer perspective, is its blazing-fast speeds. But what exactly makes 5G so fast? 

While the hardware-level details of 5G speed are extensive, this article will briefly discuss the basic building blocks that bump 5G speeds from 4G and LTE rates. 

As the name suggests, the 5G new radio (NR) requires a new kind of radio technology, antenna, and carrier tower design to achieve speeds of one gigabit per second with latency less than 10 milliseconds. The actual performance would depend on the design of the 5G products and the environment in which they operate.

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