News

Chipmakers' plans for factories in Europe, US and Asia

Source: The Economic Times, June 20, 2023 [1]
Chipmakers invest billions in new semiconductor plants, driven by increased use in everyday devices and US and EU subsidies. The European Commission has allocated 15 billion euros for public and private projects by 2030, while the CHIPS Act was passed by Biden's administration.

Intel and Germany sign agreement for $32.8 billion chip plant investment

Source: EL PAÍS English, June 19, 2023 [2]
Intel and the German government have signed a $32.8 billion investment deal for a chip manufacturing site in Magdeburg, Germany. The deal includes financial support from Berlin. The first facility is expected to start production in four to five years.

Key takeaways from robotics invest 2023

Source: LinkedIn, June 15, 2023 [3]
Robotics Invest, an invite-only summit in Boston, featured keynotes, panels, case studies, and robot demos. The event was oversubscribed, but attendees had the opportunity to access valuable insights and tactical advice.

Flowstate: Intrinsic’s app to simplify the creation of robotics applications

Source: Robohub, June 18, 2023 [4]
Finally, Intrinsic (a spin-off of Google-X) has revealed the product they have been working with the help of the Open Source Robotics Corporation team (among others): Flowstate!

Samsung-AMD alliance may undermine Nvidia’s dominance of GPU market

Source: Businesskorea, June 19, 2023 [5]
Nvidia's stock price nearly doubled in the AI craze, reaching US$1 trillion in market capitalization. With a 90% market share, Nvidia dominates the GPU market. AMD, second in the CPU market, unveiled its Instinct MI300X, a generative AI accelerator, declaring war with Nvidia, which dominates the GPU market.

CPU architectures: What’s the difference between ARM and x86 and why does it matter?

Source: ITPro, June 15, 2023 [6]
Apple, AMD, and Intel take significantly different approaches to building CPUs, with varied processor designs carrying significant implications for performance.

The next chip shortages?

Source: Semiconductor Engineering, June 15, 2023 [7]
Why geopolitics and technology shifts could drive a new supply and demand imbalance.

Papers

Impact of ROS 2 node composition in robotic systems

Source: arXiv, May 17, 2023 [8]
The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) is a second-generation framework that introduces new node types and executor models. The Component node allows for manual or dynamic composition of nodes, achieving high performance optimization. This is particularly useful for resource-constrained systems and sensor processing pipelines, enabling distributed tasks. Benchmarking is provided to analyze its impact on robotic systems, with experiments on the latest Long Term Support (LTS) ROS 2 distribution, Humble Hawksbill.

Understanding fault-tolerance vulnerabilities in advanced SoC FPGAs for critical applications

Source: ScienceDirect, May 18, 2023 [9]
The increasing complexity of heterogeneous FPGA-based SoCs raises reliability concerns, especially for critical applications like autonomous vehicles, real-time systems, space missions, and health. This paper analyzes common errors, identifies critical and vulnerable components, and explores vendor-provided and user-space reliability solutions. It highlights fault-tolerance gaps in modern SoC FPGAs and outlines future solutions.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. Chipmakers' plans for factories in Europe, US and Asia. (2023, June 20). The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/chipmakers-plans-for-factories-in-europe-us-and-asia/articleshow/101134939.cms?from=mdr ↩︎

  2. Schreiber, M. (2023, June 19). Intel and Germany sign agreement for $32.8 billion chip plant investment. EL PAÍS English. https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2023-06-19/intel-and-germany-sign-agreement-for-328-billion-chip-plant-investment.html ↩︎

  3. Saad, F. (2023, June 15). Key takeaways from robotics invest 2023. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/key-takeaways-from-robotics-invest-2023-fady-saad/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via ↩︎

  4. Tellez, R. (2023, June 18). Flowstate: Intrinsic’s app to simplify the creation of robotics applications. Robohub. https://robohub.org/flowstate-intrinsics-app-to-simplify-the-creation-of-robotics-applications/ ↩︎

  5. Min-hee, J. (2023, June 19). Samsung-AMD alliance may undermine Nvidia’s dominance of GPU market. Businesskorea. https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=116677 ↩︎

  6. Graham-Smith, D. (2023, June 15). CPU architectures: What’s the difference between ARM and x86 and why does it matter? ITPro. https://www.itpro.com/hardware/components/cpu-architectures-whats-the-difference-between-arm-and-x86-and-why-does-it-matter ↩︎

  7. Sperling, E. (2023, June 15). The next chip shortages? Semiconductor Engineering. https://semiengineering.com/the-next-chip-shortages/?cmid=718193b6-d9fe-4b41-9dfa-ca5461add665 ↩︎

  8. Macenski, S., Soragna, A., Carroll, M., & Zhenpeng, G. (2023, May 17). Impact of ROS 2 node composition in robotic systems. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.09933.pdf ↩︎

  9. Cherezova, N., Shibin, K., Jenihhin, M., & Jutman, A. (2023, May 18). Understanding fault-tolerance vulnerabilities in advanced SoC FPGAs for critical applications. ScienceDirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026271423001105 ↩︎