News Coverage

(Jan 13, 2023) SemiEngineering - Six or eight years ago when models began to explode in size (parameter count), the sheer volume of shuffling weight data into and out of training compute (either CPU or GPU) became the performance limiting bottleneck in large training runs. Faced with a choice of ever more expensive memory interfaces, such as HBM, or cutting bit precision in training, a number of companies experimented successfully with lower-precision floats. Now that networks have continued to grow exponentially in size, the exploration of FP8 is the next logical step in reducing training bandwidth demands.

(Jan 12, 2023) SemiEngineering - If headcount can’t grow, the use of IP must grow to speed up the design process. That, in turn, leads companies to focus on their real sources of value-add and differentiation, not their hoped-for sources of differentiation.

(Jan 11, 2023) Medium - Quadric caught our attention because they took a software-first approach to its edge AI chips, creating an architecture that controls data flow and enables all software and AI processing to run on a single programmable core. This eliminates the need for other ancillary processing and software elements and blends the best of current processing methods to create a single, optimized general purpose neural processing unit (GPNPU).

(Jan 11, 2023) SemiEngineering - Running a new ML operator on a slow DSP or CPU is the equivalent of charging your EV with an extension cord plugged into a 110V wall socket. What you want for your EV is an 800 Volt fast charger that tops off the battery in 20 minutes, not a low voltage, low amperage wall socket that needs 18 hours to recharge your car.

(Jan 6, 2023) AIThority - Those leading-edge smart vision functions can be embedded in a single combined sensor and processing module in a host of innovative product form factors in automotive, consumer, industrial and applications.

(Dec 15, 2022) Tracxn - AI Infrastructure sector is one of the most active sectors for investors, with an overall funding of USD 47B in 1.31K companies. It is also interesting to note that more than one third of the funding has been raised in the last 3 years (2019-2021).

(Dec 9, 2022) CRN - CRN rounds up chip companies making their mark on 2022 despite a turbulent economic situation unfolding. Quadric raised $21 million in October in a Series B round.

(Dec 8, 2022) SemiEngineering - The Achilles’ heel – the fatal flaw – of this approach is the assumption that Fallback is rare and not performance-critical. But a closer look at the approach reveals Fallback to be a naughty word – a new F word to be avoided at all costs.

(Dec 1, 2022) EE Journal - I was just introduced to the Chimera GPNPU (general-purpose neural processor unit) from the clever chaps and chapesses at Quadric, and this little scamp certainly presses my “wildly imaginative” and “dazzling” hot buttons.

(Nov 2, 2022) EENews Europe - A significant advantage of this new architecture is that neural network graphs and C++ code are merged into a single software code stream. Only one tool chain is required for scalar, vector, and matrix computations. Memory bandwidth is optimized by a single unified compilation stack that helps result in significant power minimization.