HPC pushes quantum computing capabilities forward [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

If you’re placing bets on whether quantum computing or high-performance computing (HPC) will come up on top, the answer is both.

Comparing the two is akin to comparing apples and oranges – each has its own strengths, and these strengths dictate what problems you should throw at them. Even if the best choice is a quantum computer, it’s going to need an HPC to work effectively.

Many algorithms, such as Shor’s algorithm, would take a million years on a supercomputer no matter how advanced it was. Because of its nature, a quantum computer is better suited for cryptography, which is a key driver of government interest – it has the potential to break existing encryption. Other domains that have a keen interest in quantum computing capabilities are chemistry, materials research, and Wall Street to chart finance scenarios.

At the heart of quantum computing hardware is a qubit chip. Qubits are very fragile, and they lose their information very quickly. This loss can occur within microseconds, and that is why a classical HPC is complementary to a quantum system – a traditional supercomputer is required to do the necessary error correction.

Some problems are naturally quantum problems, such as chemistry, and not all problems are one or the other – parts of a difficult application might be farmed out to a quantum computer while others are best solved by a classical supercomputer. A quantum computer can be viewed as an accelerator of an HPC system.

Universities play a key role in helping to develop quantum computing technologies. An interdisciplinary team at UMass Amherst is responsible for designing the infrastructure to support future city-scale quantum networks, one of four core thrust areas overseen by the National Science Foundation’s Center for Quantum Networks.

Both Intel and IBM are collaborating with universities to advance quantum computing. More than 100 institutions are members of the IBM Quantum Network, including Cern, and several have dedicated systems.

Read my full story for Fierce Electronics.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

Vinyl Vibes: An a-ha! Moment; Beyond ABBA

/ Gary Hilson

My vinyl collection expanded quite a bit during Covid lockdowns and restrictions – the money I would normally spend locally on beer and a burger or going out of town was redirected to buying records or LEGO.

At the start of the year, I decided I would listen through my collection alphabetically, but only sort of. Rather than going through all the A artists first, followed by B and so on, I’m listening to a single album in A, then B, then C and so forth, until I get through the entire alphabet – then I will start over. This means I won’t be listening to only one artist for albums at a time (I own every ABBA album released on vinyl and tend to be a completist when collecting music from artists I like).

My alphabetic listen-through is contained to my rock/pop albums, although I might throw a movie soundtrack into the mix, and maybe even some jazz.

a-ha – Hunting High and Low: Everyone knows “Take on Me,” but this album is more than a one hit wonder. The first five tracks on side one are all quite good and show the band’s range. Side 2 starts with the excellent “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” although the last two or three tracks are somewhat forgettable.

The Bangles – All Over the Place: This doesn’t have the high profile hit singles the band is most known for such as “Manic Monday” or “Eternal Flame,” but it’s a solid debut album. This band was the soundtrack for anyone who grew up in the 80s.

Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood: This is the only Neko Case album I own on vinyl which makes no sense because I love her voice, lyrics, and melodies – the rest of her work I only own digitally.

Def Lepard – Hysteria: I’m old enough to remember slow dancing to “Love Bites” in high school. It and “Pour Some Sugar On Me” are the only two notable tracks on this album which is probably why I was able to pick it up for less than $10. When I posted this evaluation on Facebook, I got quite a lot of push back, with folks pointing out there were other singles from the album as well as other tracks they thought we pretty good. I think I need to give this album another listen.

Kathleen Edwards – Failer: I saw Kathleen Edwards play the Mod Club while promoting her third album, which I quite like. It was one of the best live performances I’d seen. This remastered first record for vinyl is a solid debut album, and recently released as Edwards returned to her a music career should put on hold for a while. I hope her other albums get the vinyl treatment, and that Edwards will produce some new music.

Agnetha Faltskog – Wrap Your Arms Around Me: The women of ABBA both had solo careers after the group split up. This was the only one I heard when it came out. It was a solid album with good singles although every track is basically about falling in love or a failed romance. The sound wasn’t that far from ABBA itself.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

AI-Driven HBM Uptake Is Power-Sensitive [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

High-bandwidth memory (HBM) has become the artificial-intelligence memory of choice, and as HBM3 goes into volume production, more attention is being paid to power consumption in the wake of 2023’s generative AI boom.

The increasing demand for memory bandwidth from AI is directly correlated to increasing HBM bandwidth.Performance needs, memory bandwidth and memory sizes are growing exponentially, putting higher expectations and pressure on the next generation of HBM.

While bandwidth per watt as it relates to HBM is not particularly new, he said, energy consumption by data centers has been on the rise. These rapidly increasing power costs mean that bandwidth per watt is becoming a more important metric for enterprises who need to monitor operational costs—even more so with the increasing focus on sustainability initiatives.

The high costs associated with HBM and the price tag of the memory itself means the total cost of ownership becomes the deciding factor when determining if this uber-power memory is necessary for application. The process for customers to decide which memory they need starts with technical requirements like density, performance and power.

Read my full story for EE Times.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

An Ode to TV Guide

/ Gary Hilson / 1 Comment

When you grow up in a rural area, there’s more channels listed in the TV Guide than what you can tune in, but I still looked forward to getting the new issue every week.

Living south of Ottawa outside of any sizeable town meant there was no cable TV. It wasn’t until I was out of the house for a few years that my parents got a satellite dish. I had to settle for rabbit ears and a rotating tower TV antenna.

Our proximity to the U.S. meant we could pull in the Big Three as well as two PBS stations, weather permitting. Saturday nights were spent making adjustments to get the best picture quality – more accurately, the least amount of “snow” – so I could watch and record Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and classic Doctor Who. (I developed a taste for Brit TV early in life that continues to this day). I bought piles of blank VHS tapes well into my 20s to record my favourite shows, whether they were broadcast over the air or on cable when I moved into Ottawa – and then to Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto.

By the time Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was wrapping its seven-year run, I was buying TV Guide with my grown-up money. There was lot more channels on cable, but it was still possible for the publication to provide listings and prime time grids for all the stations.

Over the years, however, there were fewer descriptions for the latest episode, let alone guest star highlights.

When I relocated to Toronto for a new writing gig, I got see how the sausage was made – my group of technology magazines shared the same floor as the TV Guide Canada staff, including the beleaguered listings editors. I was witnessing the beginning of the end as the everything was moved online.

What had been a thick magazine with plenty of articles and features wrapped around the listings – and the weekly crossword – atrophied into a pale version of itself. Eventually, TV listings in print became a thing of the past (there was Starweek in the Toronto Star until there wasn’t), as people got their listings from their cable providers on screen.

I kept a handful of Star Trek themed issues over the years, and as a teen I would clip the descriptions to use as labels on my tapes. Eventually it became affordable to buy episodes on VHS, which I’ve long since sold in favor of DVD and BluRay box sets.

Not everything makes a comeback – vinyl has roared back to eclipse CD sales, and there’s renewed interest in audio and video cassettes, but in era of streaming, there’s no place for TV listings printed on newsprint.  

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

Proprietary Memories Are a High-Risk Endeavor [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

Semiconductor technologies live and die by industry standards, but are there times when it makes sense to build a heavily customized—even proprietary—memory device?

The chip sector is replete with standards organizations that guide the evolution of widely adopted memory devices. JEDEC is responsible for DRAM, LPPDR, GDDR and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), among others. The Peripheral Component Interconnect Express Special Interest Group takes care of the most ubiquitous protocol for data movement, while NVMe Express and the CXL Consortium built their specifications with PCIe as their foundation. Most recently, the UCIe was developed to bring best practices to chiplets.

The highway of DRAM technologies is littered with the roadkill of non-JEDEC-standard memories. If something isn’t JEDEC-standard, or if a DRAM vendor tries to go it alone with something that they want to differentiate with, it’s going to die.

Among the many abandoned memories that never saw widespread use are Micron Technology’s HBM competitor, Hybrid Memory Cube, and Rambus’s virtual-channel DRAM, even though the latter had the backing of Intel.

The value of a standardized memory device is that it can be multi-sourced—an SK Hynix product will plug into the same socket as a Micron product.

That’s not to say some vendors aren’t offering special features. There will be DRAM vendors that will have their own special features that they unlock for special customers, and it’s still standard DRAM.

Some memories that are developed by more than one vendor may show potential but are subsequently abandoned by all but one of the vendors. Reduced-latency DRAM was initially developed by Infineon Technologies in the late 1990s; Micron was subsequently brought in as a development partner and a second source, but Infineon opted to exit the market.

The challenge of being the sole source of a memory product that has a strong customer base—especially if it’s a Tier 1 customer—is that it’s difficult to end-of-life the product.

Read my full story for EE Times.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

Read, Write, Dance… Create

/ Gary Hilson Featured

Gary Hilson, September 2013I read, write and dance, but not necessarily in that order. I spend most of my time creating.

I write. A lot. In many formats.  As a freelance writer, I take complex technology / B2B concepts and translate them into plain language with flair and creativity built on a foundation of journalism, out-of-this-world imagination, and a dash of project management.

Many of my articles have my byline, but often my freelance writing is producing ghost written articles for clients around a wide range of technology topics.

I like to eat, so I find it helps to enjoy cooking. I’m not a gourmet chef, but I will knock your socks off with a slow cooker or casserole recipe. I generally follow a Paleo diet.

My interest in writing about technology stems from a love of science fiction since childhood, but I enjoy other genres including fantasy, mystery and thrillers. I also read a lot of comic books.

Rehearsing and performing this fox trot is one of the best experiences of my life.

Here I showcase my work as a freelance writer and blog a little about everything and anything, including recipes, books I’ve read, Lego construction, comic books and the odd rant about something or other. I am an amateur photographer and aspiring author.

If you are looking for a freelance writer with a lot of experience writing about information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors, please e-mail me.

March Reads: Watch Your Step; Discovering Brandon Sanderson

/ Gary Hilson

Sometimes I’m the mood for space opera and other times I want more traditional, “hard” science fiction. March’s reads strike a balance between human-focused adventure stories in futuristic worlds ground in solid science fiction concepts.

Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey

After travelling though time by TARDIS, my next read had me jumping parallel universes using “step” technology. Infinity Gate wasn’t what I expected given the back cover blurb, and it was a bit of adjustment after previous reads. Many of the main characters are morally gray by nature, and I wasn’t immediately sure I liked them all that much.

The clever world-building and unexpected character arcs made for a compelling read, however, and by the end I was completely onboard – I don’t know where this series is headed, but I’m intrigued.

There are millions of universes in Infinity Gate, many of them conducting business with each other. Some universes aren’t worth visiting, while others are inhabited by what appears to be soulless artificial intelligence. These distinctions matter greatly as the story goes on, beginning with a scientist living in a parallel Earth on the brink of ecological collapse.

I only recently picked this up at the bookstore in my old neighbourhood in Ottawa during one of my recent visits, and the sequel isn’t out yet.

Lockstep by Karl Schroeder

A different type of stepping technology and a totally different tone characterizes Lockstep. If the system of how people on different worlds slept for decades to sync up to enable a futuristic human economy wasn’t so complicated, this could be a YA novel.

It tells the story of a teen boy who’s been asleep for 14,000 years as human civilization evolves and expands around him under the guidance of his sister and brother, because of the lockstep, they are middle-aged adults rather than long dead. The empire built by his siblings has developed larger than life myths about him and his family, so his reappearance could have serious ramifications on how this complex society going forward.

Schroeder eschews foul language and violence, but there is sufficient action and peril propelling the story forward. Some of the characters are a little underdeveloped, and Lockstep almost feels like the first book of a series that further explores this universe, but it’s a standalone novel. An enjoyable read that has me eager to read the other Schroeder books on my shelf.

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson

I’ve been wanting to give Sanderson a try for a while. As I’m more of a science fiction reader than fantasy reader, Skyward was the obvious choice. Like Lockstep, Skyward could easily be a YA novel given the age of the characters and overall tone. There is enough peril, however, to keep readers on their toes. Sanderson is not averse to killing off a character or two to show how high the stakes are, and makes you feel their loss.

There’s also an unfolding mystery at the heart of the story, and all isn’t what it seems. Although the story is told in the first person by our heroine, the supporting characters are well developed, and even the ones that only have a few lines or minimal development have an emotional impact.

Sanderson’s writing style and worldbuilding has me eager to read the sequel as well as his fantasy novels. Skyward has also prompted me to watch his BYU lectures on writing science fiction and fantasy and apply it to my own moribund fiction writing. Sanderson loves telling stories and it shows in writing and lectures.

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

I’ve got lots of Scalzi books on the TBR, having only read Red Shirts many years ago. The Collapsing Empire seemed like a good choice to follow up Skyward, given the setting – humans in the future with spaceships. But that’s where the similarities end, as Scalzi’s writing style is quite different. His prose is very dialogue driven, and he’s generous with the swears.

But like Sanderson, Scalzi is great at establishing setting quickly and giving you a strong idea of how the world he’s built works with an interesting take on how humans in the future travel between worlds. The universe of The Collapsing Empire is clever, and the characters engaging. The plot moves forward at a fast pace, too, with a few twists. I’m looking forward to the sequel and reading more of Scalzi’s other work.

New Acquisitions

I’m proud of my restraint in 2024. I’ve bought relatively fewer books and most of them are previously enjoyed. In March I snagged one of The Chronicles of St. Mary’s books for a few bucks. I splurged on getting David Mack’s Firewall, which I’m eager to read as part of my April pile, despite not having finished any of the previous Star: Trek Picard novels.

I’d also like to tackle Dune since I want to read the books before I see the movies. My strategy continues to be to jump around from different genres and writing styles, so I don’t get stuck in a rut, even though I want to immediately read sequels and authors I know I enjoy. I’m also making a point of reading first books in series I own so I can quickly establish whether I want to commit myself to the sequels.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

The microLED market is still alive after Apple’s exit [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

Had Apple opted to exit the microLED market two years earlier, it might have been the death knell of the industry, but a Yole Research analyst who has his pulse on the technology is cautiously optimistic despite the tech giant’s recent pivot.

In an interview with Fierce Electronics, Eric Virey, principal analyst covering displays at Yole, said after investing an estimated $3 billion into microLED development and convincing Osram to spend $1.3 billion of its own money to build a fab so Apple could make its smartwatch, Apple pulled the plug and cancelled the project.

Prior to Apple taking an interest in microLEDs, the technology was barely on anyone’s radar. Apple spent $450 million in 2014 to acquire a startup, which for it wasn’t a lot of money, but for everyone else it was a significant amount of money and put microLEDs on the map.

Read my full story at Fierce Electronics.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

AI-Enabled Digital Twins Boost Productivity, Sustainability [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

Digital twins aren’t a new tool for the chip industry, but they are getting democratized to a point where they are more accessible for a broader set of commercial applications.

The ability to ingest more, higher-quality data from a wider array of sources and the application of artificial intelligence is helping to extend digital twins beyond product design to virtually envision manufacturing environments, which will reduce waste as well as contribute to meeting sustainability goals. And as the chip industry ramps up U.S. onshore manufacturing in the wake of the CHIPS Act, digital twins are poised to be a critical tool for workforce development while also accelerating productivity.

In early February 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced its intent to create a new semiconductor manufacturing institute that will use digital twin technology for production, packaging and assembly. NIST is looking to corral curriculum and best practices through its CHIPS Research and Development Office to launch a competition for a new public-private Manufacturing USA Institute.

Digital twins are more effective when silos of information are eliminated, Grieves added. “Depending on what functional area they were in, you wound up with huge inefficiencies or the inability to optimize the entire process.”

Expanding the use of digital twins out to manufacturing facilities is the natural evolution of the virtual approach the chip industry has used for decades. Digital twins are being extended to visualize equipment and manufacturing facilities before they are built, then optimized once they are in production.

Digital twins can be used to build anything, so why not the manufacturing facilities that produce semiconductors—not just the devices themselves?

Building a digital twin of a fab allows for the modeling of the manufacturing of the chip, making it possible to optimize a facility before concrete is ever poured.
A digital twin does more than simulate the manufacturing process. It also optimizes all the electricity, water and chemicals being used, which helps to achieve sustainability goals.

Read my full story for EE Times.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

TSMC, NXP Scale Up Apprenticeships [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

To help meet the demands of new fabs being built in the United States, apprenticeships are emerging as a key strategy for scaling up the talent pipeline.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), for example, sees apprenticeships as critical to supporting its workforce needs as it looks to staff two big fabs.

Developing people—giving them the skills and the on-the-job experience they’ll need to secure a permanent post—takes time, especially because there are unique skills needed that aren’t immediately available. 

TSMC’s recently announced apprenticeship program in the Phoenix area focuses on developing people for a facility technician role by providing 2,000 hours of on-the-job training in four key skills areas: water treatment, gas and chemicals, electrical, and mechanical. Courses are provided by TSMC’s technical-instruction partner, Maricopa Community Colleges.

Mentorship is critical to the process: Apprentices are paired with mentors for one-on-one guidance.

TSMC identified technicians as a focus area based on its hiring needs over the next few years. The company is working with the entities in Arizona that are responsible for workforce development in the state and its various municipalities, including the Workforce Arizona Council.

NXP Semiconductor has also been working with Maricopa since early last year. The company began looking at developing apprenticeship programs in mid-2022. NIIT has helped the company map out the process for developing a semiconductor equipment technician apprenticeship, which encompasses multiple specialty areas.

Apprenticeships fall into NIIT’s broader responsibility of executing a national strategy to build the talent pipeline to support strategic industry sectors.

NIIT is the only federally recognized entity contracted by the U.S. Department of Labor to establish and expand registered apprenticeships throughout the semiconductor and nanotechnology-related industry supply chain.

Read my full story for EE Times.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.