News

China plans to mass produce humanoids by 2025

Source: The Robot Report, November 7, 2023 [1]
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has set ambitious goals for developing humanoid robots, with a goal to mass-produce them by 2025. The plan includes establishing a humanoid innovation system, making key technology breakthroughs, and ensuring core component supply.

Vietnam sets sights on becoming semiconductor hub

Source: EE Times, November 7, 2023 [2]
Vietnam's ambition to become a key semiconductor hub in the region has been fueled by U.S. President Biden's visit and strategic partnership announcement. FPT Information System (FPT IS) has established a subsidiary, FPT Semiconductor, to focus on power management ICs (PMICs) design and development.

Nvidia plans to release three new chips for China

Source: Reuters, November 9, 2023 [3]
Nvidia plans to release three new chips for China, following the US's ban on selling two AI chips and one gaming chip to Chinese firms. The chips are HGX H20, L20 PCIe, and L2 PCIe.

EFPGA architectural improvements that lower test cost and increase quality

Source: Semiconductor Engineering, November 2, 2023 [4]
Pipelining key portions of the scan circuitry to increase scan speed.

CUDA-accelerated robot motion generation in milliseconds with NVIDIA cuRobo

Source: NVIDIA Technical Blog, November 7, 2023 [5]
Fast motion-generation algorithms for real-time autonomous robot navigation can be used in various industries like food and services, warehouse automation, and machine tending. However, this requires complex constraints and minimizing costs, requiring local optimization.

AI used in construction of chip, microchip facilities

Source: EE Times, November 8, 2023 [6]
The semiconductor and microchip manufacturing industry is rapidly evolving, with the integration of artificial intelligence transforming construction methods and transforming the development of high-tech manufacturing facilities.

How arm is gaining chip dominance with its architecture in Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Amazon, Qualcomm and more

Source: CNBC, November 9, 2023 [7]
Arm, the dominant company in chip architecture, powers nearly every smartphone, with Apple relying on custom silicon for iPhones and MacBooks. Its IPO in September valued it above $54 billion due to increasing companies opting for Arm over Intel's x86 architecture.

Global semiconductor sales increase 1.9% month-to-month in september

Source: SIA, November 1, 2023 [8]
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported a 1.9% increase in global semiconductor sales in September 2023, with a total of $134.7 billion in Q3. This represents a 6.3% increase from Q2 2023 and a 4.5% decrease from Q3 2022. The SIA represents 99% of the U.S. semiconductor industry and nearly two-thirds of non-U.S. chip firms.

Papers

Photonic accelerators for image segmentation in autonomous driving and defect detection

Source: arXiv, October 3, 2023 [9]
Photonic computing offers faster and more energy-efficient deep neural network inference, impacting applications like autonomous driving and defect detection. This paper investigates image segmentation on photonic accelerators, focusing on the best DNN architectures and their throughput and energy efficiency. It demonstrates that certain segmentation models exhibit negligible accuracy loss when executed on photonic accelerators, and discusses techniques for recovering accuracy in poor models.

Survey of simulators for aerial robots

Source: arXiv, November 4, 2023 [10]
This paper analyzes existing UAV simulators and decision factors to enhance efficiency and safety in research endeavors. It highlights the challenges of selecting the best simulator for specific use-cases, despite the numerous available options.

Previous Hardware Acceleration in Robotics Newsletters

Past ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group meetings

  1. Wessling, B. (2023, November 7). China plans to mass produce humanoids by 2025. The Robot Report. https://www.therobotreport.com/china-plans-to-mass-produce-humanoids-by-2025/?spMailingID=102502&puid=2502618&E=2502618&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=102502 ↩︎

  2. Dahad, N. (2023, November 7). Vietnam sets sights on becoming semiconductor hub. EE Times. https://www.eetimes.com/vietnam-sets-sights-on-becoming-semiconductor-hub/ ↩︎

  3. Nvidia plans to release three new chips for China - local media. (2023, November 9). Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-plans-release-three-new-chips-china-local-media-2023-11-09/ ↩︎

  4. Tate, G. (2023, November 2). EFPGA architectural improvements that lower test cost and increase quality. Semiconductor Engineering. https://semiengineering.com/efpga-architectural-improvements-that-lower-test-cost-and-increase-quality/?cmid=eca05a35-c19a-4026-913e-d83df1d8700a ↩︎

  5. Sundaralingam, B., & Hari, S. (2023, November 7). CUDA-accelerated robot motion generation in milliseconds with NVIDIA cuRobo. NVIDIA Technical Blog. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/cuda-accelerated-robot-motion-generation-in-milliseconds-with-curobo/ ↩︎

  6. Morkos, R. (2023, November 8). AI used in construction of chip, microchip facilities. EE Times. https://www.eetimes.com/embracing-ai-in-construction-of-chip-microchip-facilities/ ↩︎

  7. Tarasov, K. (2023, November 9). How arm is gaining chip dominance with its architecture in Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Amazon, Qualcomm and more. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/09/how-arm-gained-chip-dominance-with-apple-nvidia-amazon-and-qualcomm.html ↩︎

  8. Global semiconductor sales increase 1.9% month-to-month in september. (2023, November 1). SIA. https://www.semiconductors.org/global-semiconductor-sales-increase-1-9-month-to-month-in-september/ ↩︎

  9. Nair, L., Widemann, D., Turcott, B., Moore, N., Wleklinski, A., Bunandar, D., Papavasileiou, I., Wang, S., & Logan, E. (2023, October 3). Photonic accelerators for image segmentation in autonomous driving and defect detection. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.16783.pdf ↩︎

  10. Dimmig, C. A., Silano, G., McGuire, K., Gabellieri, C., Honig, W., Moore, J., & Kobilarov, M. (2023, November 4). Survey of simulators for aerial robots. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.02296 ↩︎