Semiconductor IP News and Trends Blog

Semiconductor Trends: Sonoma Indy Race and Hot Chips 2013

In this monthly video with Sean, I highlight embedded processors and future wearable sensors on the raceway to CPU heatsinks, Microsoft depth sensor chips, and Google Glass technology.

ChipEstimate.TV: John Blyler's travel adventures from Hot Chips and beyond

Sean: I heard you were at the Sonoma Indy race over the weekend. Wasn’t there a pit accident that sent one of the crew members flying into the air?

John: I was in the press room when the pit accident occurred. You should have heard the uproar from the other editors – conjecturing on motivations and the ultimate effect of the incident. I wish we could generate some of this same excitement at our Design Automation Conference (DAC). Maybe at next year’s DAC 2014 we need some kind of racing event – sans the accident.

This incident probably cost Scott Dixon a victory. Instead, Will Power won the race. Members of Power’s pit crew were the ones affected by or causing the accident – depending upon your point of view.

Sean: I’m glad that no one was seriously injured. But what does Indy racing have to do with EDA and IP?

John: Today’s high-end cars contain over 60 embedded processors. The Indy cars – especially when fully instrumented – have many more sensors and data-acquisition/telemetry components. Integration of all the hardware and software needed to make commercial and Indy cars perform correctly is no small task. It takes a lot of simulation, modeling, verification, and IP. [Shameless plug: I’ve just finished a Progress-in-Technology (PT) series book for the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) that deals with many of those issues. It will be available in November 2013.]

Figure 1: Indy cars like this one driven by Tony Kanaan (#11) have no shortage of semiconductor processors, chips, and sensors.

Who knows, maybe the pit accident wouldn’t have happened if the crews wore proximity sensors in their clothing. Semiconductor giants like Apple, Google, Samsung, and others are making a big push for wearable wireless accessories.

On final comment: I want to thank Mouser Electronics for helping me obtain a press pass for the Indy Race and for sponsoring the Hot Chips conference. This support has afforded them a great way to gain the attention of the semiconductor industry.

Sean: Let’s move on to the Hot Chips conference, which returned this year to the Stanford campus. Hot Chips is a symposium on high-performance processors. Last year, you talked about transistor variability, FinFet structures, femto cells, the decline of silicon IPOs, Wright’s vs. Moore’s Law, and more. (Wright’s is a more expansive trend of technology evolution.) What was new this year?

John: As you noted, Hot Chips is really about processors – from graphic processing units (GPUs) and accelerators to multicores and traditional “big iron.” This year was no different, but there was an expansion to cover more consumer applications. Here are just a few highlights:

AMD

• “Graphics are beginning to look more like CPUs,” noted AMD’s Bouvier in his talk about the company’s new “Kabini” APU SoC. He was explaining the inclusion of accelerators, memory structures, buses, and more interfaces in today’s GPUs.
• Design and floorplanning architectures are now routinely using CPUs as heatsinks for the GPU during graphic-extensive processing, and vice versa.

Microsoft Xbox One

• Microsoft has designed special audio-processing chips that represent more than a CPU core’s worth of processing. The Kinect tracking system uses this hardware to determine the location of all game players (Figure 2). Further, Kinect has a sophisticated depth sensor subsystem to better track user gestures while compensating for all types of lighting conditions. This subsystem uses time-of-flight technology, which takes differential light measurements.
• I found it very telling that a traditional software company like Microsoft is becoming a robust hardware company by designing its own semiconductor chips – in addition to boards and end-user products.

Figure: Engineers at Microsoft test out the Kinect’s depth sensor algorithms.

Google Glass

• Babak Parviz, founder and head of the Glass project at Google, explained our society’s progression from driving to mainframe computers (1980s-90s) to carrying computers in our pocket (2000s) to wearing them all day on our head (e.g., Google Glass).
• One of the leading smartphone trends is ever-improving  screen resolution and larger screen size. Parviz argued that there is a physical limit to this trend, but Glass offers the next display form-factor evolution (i.e., immersive with one’s surroundings).
• Augmented reality – when it arrives – will be transformative technology.
• Google Glass is a standalone unit (not yet cloud-based) that includes Internet access, voice controls, and a camera for pictures and videos. It accomplishes all of this with dual-core processors running at more than 1 GHz. Five MEMS sensors capture all of the environmental data. It has a two-dimensional touch panel on the side of the Glass.

Hallway Discussions:

• During lunch, an engineer asked this intriguing question: With the supposed death of Moore’s Law, why should anyone invest in the latest process-node designs or equipment?
• When asked why some major companies never present at Hot Chips – or anywhere else – one company engineer replied that the lawyers are afraid that the release of any engineering information may result in lawsuits by patent trolls.

Sean: Thanks again for your monthly update on what’s new in the world of semiconductors and IP.

John: My pleasure – thanks!