NextSilicon’s Maverick-2 locks onto bottleneck code

• NextSilicon has developed a novel chip that adapts its hardware to accelerate high-performance computing applications.
• The Maverick-2 is claimed to have up to 4x the processing performance per watt of graphics processing units (GPUs) and 20x that of high-performance general processors (CPUs).

After years of work, the start-up NextSilicon has detailed its Maverick-2, what it claims is a new class of accelerator chip.

Brandon Draeger

A key complement to the chip is NextSilicon’s software, which parses the high-performance computing application before mapping it onto the Maverick-2. 

“CPUs and GPUs treat all the code equally,” says Brandon Draeger, vice president of marketing at NextSilicon. “Our approach looks at the most important, critical part of the high-performance computing application and we focus on accelerating that.”

With the unveiling of the Maverick-2 NextSilicon has exited its secrecy period.

Founded in 2017, the start-up has raised $303 million in funding and has 300 staff.  The company is opening two design centres—in Serbia and Switzerland—with a third planned for India. The bulk of the company’s staff is located in Israel.

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Intel sets a course for scalable optical input-output

• Intel is working with several universities to create building-block circuits to address its optical input-output (I/O) needs for the next decade-plus.

• By 2024 the company wants to demonstrate the technologies achieving 4 terabits-per-second (Tbps) over a fibre at 0.25 picojoules-per-bit (pJ/b).

Intel has teamed up with seven universities to address the optical I/0 needs for several generations of upcoming products.

The initiative, dubbed the Intel Research Center for Integrated Photonics for Data Centre Interconnects, began six months ago and is a three-year project.

No new location is involved, rather the research centre is virtual with Intel funding the research. By setting up the centre, Intel’s goal is to foster collaboration between the research groups.

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