AI Chips : A Step Forward to Transforming Computing World

"Artificial intelligence is not about building minds, it’s about the improvement of tools to solve them."

We can keep all the arguments and discussions aside and we can believe that today we are surrounded by devices. From smartphones to trimmer to door locks, we are surrounded and artificial intelligence is ingested in almost every device and it is remarkable, indeed. Our workload has been reduced in many aspects and we can thank the scientists and inventors. 

Yes! The guess is close to correct and the topic for today is Artificial Intelligence chips (AI chips). AI chips are specifically designed silicon chips to accelerate artificial intelligence applications like robotics, internet of things, data-intensive or sensor-driven tasks. Computer systems are often used with coprocessors, chips with specific-designated tasks like graphics card, sound card, graphics processing unit, and digital signal processors. As deep learning and artificial intelligence are rising, the concept of coprocessors is being implemented thus giving us AI chips.

In the 1990s, parallel high throughput systems were tried to be created for neural network simulations. FPGA-based accelerators were also first explored in the 1990s for both inference and training. ANNA was a neural net CMOS accelerator developed by Yann LeCun. In the 2000s, CPUs also gained increasingly wide SIMD units, driven by video and gaming workloads; as well as support for packed low precision data types. 

Deep learning frameworks are still evolving, making it hard to design custom hardware. Reconfigurable devices such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) make it easier to evolve hardware, frameworks, and software alongside each other. While GPUs and FPGAs perform far better than CPUs for AI-related tasks, a factor of up to 10 inefficiencies may be gained with a more specific design, via an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). These accelerators employ strategies such as optimized memory use and the use of lower precision arithmetic to accelerate calculation and increase the throughput of computation.

 

In June 2017, IBM researchers announced an architecture intending to generalize the approach to heterogeneous computing and massively parallel systems. In October 2018, IBM researchers announced an architecture based on in-memory processing and modeled on the human brain's synaptic network to accelerate deep neural networks. The system is based on phase-change memory arrays. In February 2019, IBM Research launched an AI Hardware Center and claimed to have improved AI computing efficiency by 2.5 times every year intending to improve efficiency by 1000 times within a decade. 

 

IBM reported two key developments in their AI efficiency quest. First, IBM will now be collaborating with Red Hat to make IBM’s AI digital core compatible with the Red Hat OpenShift ecosystem. This collaboration will allow for IBM’s hardware to be developed in parallel with the software so that as soon as the hardware is ready, all of the software capability will already be in place. Second, IBM and the design automation firm Synopsys are open-sourcing an analog hardware acceleration kit — highlighting the capabilities analog AI hardware can provide.

 

The artificial intelligence chip market was valued at $6,638 million in 2018 and is projected to reach $91,185 million by 2025, registering a CAGR of 45.2% from 2019 to 2025. AI helps to eliminate or minimize the risk to human life in many industry verticals. The need for more efficient systems to solve mathematical and computational problems is becoming crucial owing to the increase in the volume of the data. 

Thus, the majority of the key players in the IT industry have focused on developing AI chips and applications. Furthermore, the emergence of quantum computing and the increase in the implementation of AI chips in robotics drive the growth of the global artificial intelligence chip market. In addition, the emergence of autonomous robotics—robots that develop and control themselves autonomously—is anticipated to provide potential growth opportunities for the market.

 

In terms of the benefits of AI chips, security and privacy are least compromised. AI chips which are applicable for deep neural networks have the lowest latency. This means that the chances of them getting concealed are the lowest. The networks are hinted at in their application. Another advantage of AI Chips is the fact that it has a much lower power consumption. Normal general-purpose chips were really inefficient. But AI chips enhance the speed of the AI processor to a greater extent.

 

Significant Factors impacting AI Chip Industry

 

Increase in demand for smart homes and smart cities

 

AI has the ability to provide impetus to initiate smart city programs in developing countries, such as India. Tools and technologies that are artificially intelligent possess a massive potential to transform interconnected digital homes and smart cities. Furthermore, the creation of a chip that embeds an inbuilt AI network has emerged as an opportunity for the artificial intelligence chip market.

 

Rise in investments in AI startups

 

Multiple countries, especially the U.S., witness considerable growth in tech start-ups every year, which are backed by various venture capitalists and venture capitals, thus increasing the market scope. Various key players have been innovating to build a dedicated platform.

 

Emergence of quantum computing

 

Quantum computers take seconds to complete a calculation that would otherwise take thousands of years. Quantum computers are an innovative transformation of artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning. Thus, the emergence of quantum computing fuels the growth of the artificial intelligence chip market.

 

Apart from these, the dearth of skilled force and adoption of AI in developing regions play key roles in making the AI chip industry a boom. Furthermore, the development of smarter virtual assistants is opportunistic for the overall market. A notable illustration is Jarvis Corp, which is a start-up in the conceptual phases, to build a virtual assistant that answers questions by accessing the internet and acting as an internet server and as a control for connected devices.

 

AI and Machine Learning are developing fastly and getting adjusted to our daily life devices and AI chips are like the heart of these devices; faster, compatible, and efficient. With such a larger domain comes larger challenges and responsibilities and the brainy people are doing pretty well in maintaining them.

 

So, here is my question, easy and simple:

 

What might have been the motivation behind the first silicon chip? 

 

Answer it in the comment box and get a shoutout from the IEEE team. Do comment and share your views and suggestions.

Wireless Electricity

Imagine a world without wires, for instance, your home may be equipped with a small receiver that intercepts wireless power and then further distributes that power wirelessly to every device. What if our cars are powered by energy transmitted merely through the air? 

"Power can be, and at no distant date will be, transmitted without wires, for all commercial uses, such as the lighting of homes and the driving of airplanes. I have discovered the essential principles, and it only remains to develop them commercially. When this is done, you will be able to go anywhere in the world — to the mountain top overlooking your farm, to the arctic, or the desert — and set up a little equipment that will give you heat to cook with, and light to read by. This equipment will be carried in a satchel not as big as the ordinary suitcase. In years to come wireless lights will be as common on the farms as ordinary electric lights are nowadays in our cities.” 

(The American Magazine, April 1921).

These are the words of a great inventor of the 18th century, and a futuristic man, Nikola Tesla. This man with such a great vision of a worldwide wireless transmission of electricity was much ahead of his time, thinking of a world with free energy. 

Since those times, inventors and engineers have been seeing the same dream, to make it possible that large amounts of electricity could be sent for long distances all without wires. 

Recently, a New Zealand-based startup Emrod has developed a method of safely and wirelessly transmitting electric power across long distances without the use of copper wire, and is working on implementing it with the country's second-largest power distributor. 

But the concept of wireless power transmission (WPT) is not new to us. It was introduced to the world much before, back in the days of Heinrich Hertz and Nikola Tesla, who discovered that energy could be transported by electromagnetic waves in free space.   

"...Electricity could move for hundreds of miles uninterrupted, and anyone with a receiver could access it..." Tesla theorized.

Tesla's early experiments could only send power within a short distance. So to overcome this he thought whether the connection could be stronger if he went through the ground instead of the air. The idea was to send electricity deep into the ground and use the Earth as a giant conductor; i.e. transmission supported by natural electromagnetic resonance of the earth.

He experimented with transmitting power by inductive and capacitive coupling using high AC voltages generated with his Tesla coil. He attempted to develop a wireless lighting system based on the same principle.

In 1899 Tesla presented a wireless transmission field powered fluorescent lamps miles twenty-five miles from the power supply without the use of wires. He successfully lighted a small incandescent lamp by the current induced in the coil, using a resonant circuit grounded on one end.

Tesla also attempted to construct a large high-voltage wireless power station, the WardenClyffe Power plant, that could broadcast both information and power worldwide. But the project was abandoned in 1906. The idea remained alive in the minds of researchers which inspired them to dwell upon new theories towards achieving this.

Wireless Power Transmission (WPT)

It refers to the transmission of electrical energy without wires.  A wireless power transmission system includes a transmitter device, driven by electric power from a power source, generates a time-varying electromagnetic field, which transmits power across space to a receiver device, which extracts power from the field and supplies it to an electrical load.

So far inductive coupling or simply inductive charging has been the most widely used wireless power transmission technology and has contributed to many commercial products like wireless charging pads to recharge mobile and handheld wireless devices such as laptop and tablet computers, cellphones, etc.

Inductive coupling falls under the near-field category of WPT where the power is being transferred over short distances by magnetic fields using inductive coupling between coils.

Two conductors are said to be Inductively Coupled or Magnetically Coupled when a change in current through one wire induces a voltage across the ends of the other wire through electromagnetic induction. 

“...Wireless charging, also known as inductive charging, is based on a few simple principles. The technology requires two coils: a transmitter and a receiver. An alternating current is passed through the transmitter coil, generating a magnetic field. This, in turn, induces a voltage in the receiver coil; this can be used to power a mobile device or charge a battery…."

It comes with a major drawback that it can only achieve higher efficiency when the coils are very close together, usually adjacent.

This efficiency could be increased by using resonant circuits to achieve high efficiencies at greater distances than the conventional commonly used inductive coupling. 

In resonant inductive coupling, power is transferred by magnetic fields between two resonant circuits (one in the transmitter and one in the receiver) tuned to resonate at the same frequency. This increases coupling and power transfer. 

Recent Advancements of this century in WPT

In 2007, MIT researchers showed it was possible to wirelessly power a light bulb more than 2 meters away, raising the possibility that coils buried in a road could help charge electric vehicles on the move above them.

With this researchers of Standard University are also looking forward to bring, use of wireless power for moving electric vehicles to reality in near future.

The interest for WPT has been inflating over the last five to ten years among the specialists, especially in the mobile phone sector – where wireless phone chargers are trending in the market. In 2018, companies like Apple, Samsung, and Huawei have started hitting the market with wireless chargers compatible with the latest models of their mobile phones. 

Coming back to the New Zealand-based startup company, Emrod's idea of WPT. They are claiming to achieve, scaling up a wireless electric power transmission system on the idea which is quite similar to a radio system. 

Energy is converted into electromagnetic radiation by a transmitting antenna, picked up by a receiving antenna, and then distributed locally by conventional means..……. What's new here is how New Zealand startup Emrod has borrowed ideas from radar and optics and used metamaterials to focus the transmitted radiation even more tightly than previous microwave-based wireless power attempts.

The system consists of a transmitting antenna, a series of relays, and a receiving antenna which is a rectifying antenna that converts the microwave energy into electricity. Its beams use the non-ionizing industrial, scientific, and medical band of the radio spectrum, including frequencies commonly used in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The power here is beamed directly between specific points, with no radiation around the beam. Also a "low power laser safety curtain" immediately shuts down the power transmission before any object, like a bird, drone, power thief, or helicopter, can touch the main beam.

Researchers, companies, and specialists are working towards new theories and models to propose an efficient idea for implementing WPT. More R&D efforts are required to implement a wireless power system with safe, secure, high efficiency, and optimal capital cost, ruling out high power loss, non-directionality, and inefficiency for longer distances. 

Now Answer this: How Wireless Electricity can lead us to a more sustainable future? 

To further explore the topic please refer to these links :

1.  https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/emrod-chases-the-dream-of-utilityscale-wireless-power-transmission

2.   https://news.mit.edu/2007/wireless-0607

3.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2019/07/10/how-nikola-tesla-planned-to-use-earth-for-wireless-power-transfer/?sh=70a6b3767490