Month: March 2022

Gewehr bei Fuß nach dem Corona-Blues?

Kaum rückt ein Ende der Pandemie in greifbare Nähe, werden Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene mit einer neuen Wehrpflicht-Debatte konfrontiert. Führende Politiker der Kanzlerpartei SPD sind allerdings – noch – dagegen

Kaum rückt ein Ende der Pandemie in greifbare Nähe, werden Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene mit einer neuen Wehrpflicht-Debatte konfrontiert. Führende Politiker der Kanzlerpartei SPD sind allerdings – noch – dagegen

UCIe open chiplet standard backed by Intel, AMD, and ARM could lead to chips with mix-and-match parts

Chip designers and manufacturers have widely adopted a “chiplet” strategy in recent years, basically combining a series of smaller modular bits of silicon with different functions together to create more versatile processors. Now many of the biggest players in the semiconductor space have come together to introduce an open standard for chiplets. The new Universal Chiplet […]

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Chip designers and manufacturers have widely adopted a “chiplet” strategy in recent years, basically combining a series of smaller modular bits of silicon with different functions together to create more versatile processors.

Now many of the biggest players in the semiconductor space have come together to introduce an open standard for chiplets. The new Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) specification that could not only make it easier to design processors that use chiplets, but also allow for interoperability of chiplets: imagine an Intel chip with Qualcomm or Samsung chiplets, or vice versa.

It’s not like we haven’t seen rival chip makers partner on things like this in the past. Samsung’s new Exynos 2200 processor featured AMD RDNA 2 graphics, for example (for better or worse). A few years ago Intel released a set of chips with AMD Radeon Vega graphics. And every now and again chip makers will release x86 processors with ARM or RISC-V co-processors.

But up until now that’s largely happened on an ad-hoc basis. The new UCIe specification establishes a standard platform for connecting chiplets and covers both physical aspects and software for interconnection and interoperability. As AnandTech notes, it would be similar to the way PCIe expansion cards work today: any graphics, storage, networking, or other card that supports the standard will slot into a PC with the appropriate port, regardless of who makes the PC or the card.

The difference is that UCIe is happening at the chip and chiplet level, so it’s unlikely that end users will be able to customize chips. But chip designers and manufacturers will be able to.

So it’s notable that the UCIe standard is backed by many of the biggest chip designers and manufacturers including AMD, Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, Samsung, TSMC, Microsoft, Meta, Google Cloud, and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering.

The UCIe 1.0 specification is already available upon request, and there’s a white paper explaining the reasons the standards was created and how it will work. Modeled after existing plug-and-play solutions including PCI Express and Compute Express link, the new UCIe specification also leverages technologies developed for those standards.

In addition to launching a new standard, the groups behind UCIe plan to form an industry consortium to continue supporting, developing, and promoting the new standard moving forward.

press release

read more at: AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware

The post UCIe open chiplet standard backed by Intel, AMD, and ARM could lead to chips with mix-and-match parts appeared first on Liliputing.

Fixing ultra-emitting methane leaks is a low-cost climate win

The tools to hold oil and gas accountable are getting better.

Image of fossil fuel extraction equipment.

Enlarge (credit: Sean Hannon)

Giant methane plumes from fossil fuel extraction and transportation are losing the industry millions of metric tons of methane—at high costs for the climate, society, and even the industry’s pocketbooks.

Although methane emissions are relatively low compared to CO2 emissions, each ton has a whopping 30 to 80 times the relative warming potential (depending on the timescale of interest). On the plus side, methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime—roughly nine years. So reigning in emissions as soon as possible represents one of the better bets for lowering temperatures in the coming decades.

But to date, methods for detecting methane emissions have been limited, and it has been challenging to find, measure, and curtail all anthropogenic sources. A recent study describes how researchers used a European Union satellite to carry out a global survey of unusually large methane plumes, finding 1,800 “ultra-emitters” during the time frame of 2019 to 2020. Two-thirds of these emitters were connected to the oil and gas industry, and just three countries—including the US—were responsible for the majority of the problem.

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