Samuel K. Moore

1 month ago | evdriven.com | Samuel K. Moore

In the latest round of machine learning benchmark results from MLCommons, computers built around Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPU architecture outperformed all others. But AMD’s latest spin on its Instinct GPUs, the MI325, proved a match for the Nvidia H200, the product it was meant to counter. The comparable results were mostly on tests of one of the smaller-scale large language models, Llama2 70B (for 70 billion parameters).

1 month ago | spectrum.ieee.org | Samuel K. Moore

A long-awaited, emerging computer network component may finally be having its moment. At Nvidia’s GTC event last week in San Jose, the company announced that it will produce an optical network switch designed to drastically cut the power consumption of AI data centers. The system—called a co-packaged optics, or CPO, switch—can route tens of terabits per second from computers in one rack to computers in another.

1 month ago | evdriven.com | Samuel K. Moore

A long-awaited, emerging computer network component may finally be having its moment. At Nvidia’s GTC event last week in San Jose, the company announced that it will produce an optical network switch designed to drastically cut the power consumption of AI data centers. The system—called a co-packaged optics, or CPO, switch—can route tens of terabits per second from computers in one rack to computers in another.

2 months ago | spectrum.ieee.org | Samuel K. Moore

Although they’re a staple of sci-fi movies and conspiracy theories, in real life, tiny flying microbots—weighed down by batteries and electronics—have struggled to get very far. But a new combination of circuits and lightweight solid-state batteries called a “flying batteries” topology could let these bots really take off, potentially powering microbots for hours from a system that weighs milligrams.

2 months ago | spectrum.ieee.org | Samuel K. Moore

Last week at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference, two of the biggest rivals in advanced chipmaking, Intel and TSMC, detailed the capabilities of the key memory circuits, SRAM, built using their newest technologies, Intel 18a and TSMC N2. Chipmakers’ ability to keep scaling down circuits has slowed over the years—but it’s been particularly difficult to shrink SRAM, which is made up of large arrays of memory cells and supporting circuits.