Why not Prague? Cultures come together and sometimes clash in Eastern Europe. The ODA is all about finding common ground. (Source: Ralph Grabowski) The Open Design Alliance has transformed the CAD universe with the development of standardized formats for content exchange. This year they held their annual conference in Prague and CEO Neil Peterson unveiled his latest plans to … Read more
At the end of September, in conjunction with National Suicide Prevention Month, I attended a presentation by Matt Vogl, the Executive Director of the National Mental Health Innovation Center (NMHIC) at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado. Following close on the heels of an August suicide of a nine-year-old boy in Colorado, the speech focused on new innovative … Read more
In 1992, Pixel, a subsidiary of Circus Logic, introduced two new digital video chips, the CL-PX2070 and CL-PX2080. Those chips were the most sophisticated and complex chips for multimedia and video applications we had seen and were designed to process and display multiple streams of full motion video at the same time. The PX2070 had four major functional units: the … Read more
Having watched the Oculus Connect 5 keynote and seeing the follow-up coverage, I think Facebook definitely has some amazing innovations coming around the bend – well earned and hopefully well-publicized innovations. The hardware looks seamless and easy to adopt, there appears to be enough horsepower for half-decent VR experiences, and it does away with the confusion of mixing smartphones and … Read more
Ai Build is a company that has managed to combine all the hot-button technologies of manufacturing into one product package—the Ai Build Factory as a Service (FaaS). It’s AI+large scale 3D printing+IoT. Unveiled at the Victoria and Albert Museum during Digital Design Weekend 2018, Ai Build’s new package gives manufacturers the ability to license their automated fabrication product for on-prem … Read more
Nvidia, with its claim to be the leading AI training engine in the data center, has painted a big bullseye on their back. Nvidia’s outsize marketing strategy means that everyone who has introduced or shown an AI chip is going to come after Nvidia. Nvidia has raised the bar with their new Turing-based Tesla T4 AIB, and, strangely, is positioning … Read more
Siemens has announced the acquisition of Lightwork Design of Sheffield, England. Lightwork began life as an OEM provider of rendering software to many CAD companies including Autodesk, PTC, Siemens, and Dassault at one time or another. The company did not make products that sold directly to customers. Lightwork Design supplied rendering technology to Siemens for over twenty years. The company … Read more
Maxon’s parent company Nemetschek has always been an interesting company, more a group of independent companies with a layer of infrastructure on top to provide some management and bookkeeping. The structure has served the company well since its founding in 1986. The individual companies were motivated to excel on their own. But, in some instances, it seemed the company wasn’t … Read more
Gamescom saw the introduction of new products from Dell under the brand name of Alienware and Dell. Dell used the event to preview new products coming soon in the September 2018 time frame. Dell showed two new Dell monitors and Alienware gaming laptops & desktops. Dell launched its 24-inch and 27-inch monitors with AMD Freesync support for a smooth gaming … Read more
Neural network inference is all about the memory according to the founders of Redwood City-based Mythic. Since the company was founded in 2012, Mike Henry and Dave Fick have attracted $55 million in funding and continued to develop the mixed signal multiplier concept they came up with while at the Michigan Integrated Circuits Lab. They hold that most of the … Read more
At this year’s SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, The Khronos Group has launched its new interoperability standard for neural networks. The Neural Network Exchange Format (NNEF) is an open, implementation-independent way to describe neural networks designed to cut through the current tangle of framework-specific formats. The new standard was released in provisional form in December of 2017 and, after a period of … Read more
Arm chose this year’s IEEE Hot Chips Symposium to show off their first-generation Machine Learning Processor claiming a design that delivers ‘massive’ efficiency improvements over GPU, CPU, or DSP implementations as well as the ability to scale from IoT to server applications. Being an English design, it probably serves tea in a porcelain cup, as well. Leaving aside the issue … Read more
