News

The semiconductor industry is ‘near its limit,’ says Nvidia CEO

Source: TechHQ, October 17, 2022 [1]
CEO Jensen Huang believes that the long-held notion that the processing power of computers increases exponentially every couple of years has hit its natural limit.

Intel and Google collaborate on computing ASIC for data centers

Source: allaboutcircuits, October 18, 2022 [2]
A collaboration between the two tech giants has resulted in improved data center compute hardware. Google announced the release of its new C3 machine series, which features a custom infrastructure processing unit (IPU) developed in collaboration with Intel. In this article, we'll look at the new IPU and how it provides a custom computing infrastructure for Google's C3 machines.

Chipmakers expand SiC production as demand for power electronics grows

Source: allaboutcircuits, October 12, 2022 [3]
Wolfspeed, STMicroelectronics, SK Siltron, and Onsemi have independently announced new efforts to bolster the SiC supply chain over the next five years.

Oracle Cloud adding tens of thousands of Nvidia chips for AI

Source: Reuters, October 18, 2022 [4]
Oracle and Nvidia are expanding their partnership. They are adding tens of thousands of Nvidia's chips to boost artificial intelligence work in Oracle's cloud. The companies declined to say how much the additional hardware would cost or how many chips were being sold, they said the expansion includes Nvidia's most advanced graphics processing units.

Can robots and humans Co-exist in public? UT campus study will offer answers

Source: UT News, October 18, 2022 [5]
A new grant will support the creation of a robot delivery network on campus. Researchers plan a five-year study focusing on what it takes to create, safely operate and maintain this kind of robot network. The first deployments are scheduled for early 2023 at The University of Texas at Austin.

MassRobotics announces collaboration with AMD to advance adaptive computing in robotics

Source: ACCESSWIRE, October 18, 2022 [6]
MassRobotics, an innovation hub and startup cluster focused on the needs of the robotics community, today announced it is collaborating with AMD to introduce and deliver technologies to robotics startups. Through the industrial suite of AMD tools, platforms and an accelerated app store designed for the robotics industry, robotics startups will be able to further develop innovative solutions around automation, mobility, AI and machine vision-related applications.

Future-proofing IT infrastructure with virtual GPUs

Source: Engineering, October 17, 2022 [7]
Data centers are undergoing a renaissance using GPU-accelerated solutions. Organizations use them to help drive better business decisions, boost productivity, and design better products. Virtualization software such as NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) makes it possible for users to work from anywhere.

What is FPGA (field-programmable gate array)? Meaning, working, and uses

Source: Spiceworks, October 17, 2022 [8]
A field programming gate array is defined as an integrated circuit made of semiconductor material that can be reprogrammed or configured by the user after it is purchased instead of the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) alone. This article explains how FPGAs work and their applications in various industries.

Clearpath robotics launches outdoor autonomy software

Source: The Robot Report, October 18, 2022 [9]
Clearpath Robotics has launched an autonomous navigation software platform called OutdoorNav. Software provides point-to-point, GPS-based autonomous navigation through proprietary fusion of vehicle sensor data. Users can interact with the software using a web-based user interface or through a documented API.

Papers

Advanced embedded system modeling and simulation in an open source RISC-V virtual prototype

Source: MDPI, September ,29 2022 [10]
RISC-V is a modern Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) that has enormous potential to become a game changer in the Internet of Things (IoT) era. SystemC-based Virtual Prototypes (VPs) have been introduced into the ecosystem to lay the foundation for advanced system-level use-cases.

FD-CNN: A frequency-domain FPGA acceleration scheme for CNN-based image processing applications

Source: ACM, September 13, 2022 [11]
FD-CNN is a novel CNN accelerator leveraging the partial decoding technique to accelerate CNNs directly in the frequency domain. It avoids the most time-consuming operations of image decoding and directly feed the DCT coefficients (i.e., the frequency data) into CNNs. FD-CNN achieves on-average 3.24 times faster throughput and lower latency on ZC-706 and ZCU-102 platforms.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. Kaur, D. (2022, October 17). The semiconductor industry is 'near its limit,' says Nvidia CEO. TechHQ. https://techhq.com/2022/10/the-semiconductor-industry-is-near-its-limit-says-nvidia-ceo/ ↩︎

  2. Hertz, J. (2022, October 18). Intel and Google collaborate on computing ASIC for data centers. allaboutcircuits. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/intel-and-google-collaborate-on-computing-asic-data-centers/ ↩︎

  3. Ognenova, B. (2022, October 12). Chipmakers expand SiC production as demand for power electronics grows. allaboutcircuits. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/chipmakers-expand-sic-production-as-demand-power-electronics-grows/ ↩︎

  4. Lee, J. J. (2022, October 18). Oracle cloud adding tens of thousands of Nvidia chips for AI. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/oracle-cloud-adding-tens-thousands-nvidia-chips-ai-2022-10-18/ ↩︎

  5. Burkhart, R. (2022, October 18). Can robots and humans Co-exist in public? UT campus study will offer answers. UT News. https://news.utexas.edu/2022/10/17/can-robots-and-humans-co-exist-in-public-ut-campus-study-will-offer-answers/ ↩︎

  6. MassRobotics announces collaboration with AMD to advance adaptive computing in robotics. (2022, October 18). Press Release Service & Global Newswire | ACCESSWIRE. https://www.accesswire.com/720850/MassRobotics-Announces-Collaboration-with-AMD-to-Advance-Adaptive-Computing-in-Robotics ↩︎

  7. Future-proofing IT infrastructure with virtual GPUs. (2022, October 17). Engineering.com. https://www.engineering.com/story/future-proofing-it-infrastructure-with-virtual-gpus ↩︎

  8. What is FPGA (field-programmable gate array)? Meaning, working, and uses. (2022, October 17). Spiceworks. https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/networking/articles/what-is-fpga/ ↩︎

  9. Crowe, S. (2022, October 18). Clearpath robotics launches outdoor autonomy software. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/clearpath-robotics-outdoor-autonomy-software/ ↩︎

  10. Pieper, P., Herdt, V., & Drechsler, R. (2022, September 29). Advanced embedded system modeling and simulation in an open source RISC-V virtual prototype. MDPI. https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9268/12/4/52 ↩︎

  11. Xiaoyang, W., Zhe, Z., Zhihang, Y., Jingchen, Z., Guangyu, S., Yulong, C., Yao, Z., & Kangrui, S. (2022, September 13). FD-CNN: A frequency-domain FPGA acceleration scheme for CNN-based image processing applications. ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3559105 ↩︎