Hey friends, welcome to this week’s show. Sorry for the delay in getting it out, I’ve been swamped at work and the week got away from me. So, this time, Spaz, Julie, Thorston, Jacob, David and I have one of our regular check-ins, where we talk about what we’re playing (which you can see below)...
The post SGJ Podcast #468 – Check-In appeared first on Space Game Junkie.
Tuesday 11 June 2024 will be remembered as one of the most important days in the history of Raspberry Pi.
The successful introduction of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s commercial subsidiary on the London Stock Exchange is a genuinely remarkable achievement. I want to put on record my huge congratulations and thanks to Eben Upton, Martin Hellawell, and the whole team at Raspberry Pi Holdings plc for everything they have done to make this possible.
The purpose of the IPO was to secure the next stage of growth and impact for both the Foundation and the company. We have huge ambitions and the IPO has provided both organisations with the capital we need to pursue those ambitions at pace and scale. Our Chief Executive Philip Colligan has already explained what it means for the Raspberry Pi Foundation and our mission to empower young people all over the world.
In this post, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the significant contribution that others have made over the years, particularly all of the Trustees who have been so generous with their time, energy, and expertise.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation was established in 2008 by six founding Trustees: Alan Mycroft, David Braben, Eben Upton, Jack Lang, Pete Lomas, and Rob Mullins. All of them deserve credit and thanks for setting us off on this incredible journey.
Alan, Eben, Jack, and Rob were all involved with the Computer Lab at the University of Cambridge. They were dealing with a decline in applications to study the computer science undergraduate course, which was a symptom of the much wider challenge that far too many young people weren’t getting access to opportunities to learn computer science, or getting hands-on with programming and electronics.
David Braben brought an industry perspective, drawing on the challenges he was experiencing with recruiting engineers and programmers at the world-leading games company that he had founded, Frontier Developments.
For Pete Lomas, he was paying forward the support and inspiration that he received from a college technician who gave him the opportunity and encouragement to experiment with programming a DEC PDP-8. That experience ultimately led Pete to establish Norcott Technologies, an electronics design and manufacturing business that he still runs today.
The founding Trustees’ original idea was to create a low-cost programmable computer — available for the price of a textbook — that would remove price as a barrier to owning a computer and inspire young people to take their first steps with computing. It took four years for the first Raspberry Pi computer to be launched, an achievement for which Eben and Pete were rightly honoured, along with other members of the team, as recipients of the prestigious MacRobert Prize for engineering.
What none of our founding Trustees could have predicted was the enormous commercial success of Raspberry Pi computers. In realising their vision of a low-cost programmable computer for education, the team created a new category of single-board computers that found a home with enthusiasts and industry, enabling the team to evolve — through hard work and creativity — into a business that is now entering a new phase as a listed company.
They also delivered on the original mission, with computer science at the University of Cambridge now being one of the most oversubscribed undergraduate courses in the country and many applicants citing Raspberry Pi computers as part of their introduction to programming.
The commercial success of Raspberry Pi has enabled the Foundation to expand its educational programmes to the point where it is now established as one of the world’s leading nonprofits focused on democratising access to computing education, and is benefiting the lives of tens of millions of young people already.
While no-one really knows the origin of the proverb ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, we can all recognise the truth in that simple statement. It applies just as much for endeavours like Raspberry Pi.
Over the years, Raspberry Pi has been a genuine team game. Employees in the Foundation and our commercial subsidiary, advisers, partner organisations and supporters, volunteers and community members have all played a crucial role in the success of both the company and the Foundation.
Over the years there have been 21 Trustees of the Foundation, bringing an incredible range of skills and experience that has elevated our ambitions and supported the teams in both the Foundation and the company.
All of our Trustees have provided their time and expertise for free, never receiving any financial benefit for their contribution as Trustees.
Serving as a Trustee of a charity is a serious business, with significant responsibility and accountability. While many charities have commercial operations, there is no doubt that the scale and complexity of Raspberry Pi’s commercial business has placed significant additional responsibilities on all of our Trustees.
I especially want to pay tribute to my predecessors as chair of the Board of Trustees: Jack Lang, one of our founding Trustees, who sadly passed away this year; and David Cleevely, who continues to support our work as a Member of the Foundation. Both Jack and David played a particularly important part in the success of Raspberry Pi.
As we enter this new phase for the Foundation’s relationship with Raspberry Pi Holdings Ltd, we are delighted to welcome three new Trustees to the Board:
The post A vote of thanks to our Trustees appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
BAE Systems and GlobalFoundries are teaming up to strengthen the supply of chips for national security programs, aligning technology roadmaps and collaborating on innovation and manufacturing. Focus areas include advanced packaging, GaN-on-silicon chips, silicon photonics, and advanced technology process development.
Onsemi plans to build a $2 billion silicon carbide production plant in the Czech Republic. The site would produce smart power semiconductors for electric vehicles, renewable energy technology, and data centers.
The global chip manufacturing industry is projected to boost capacity by 6% in 2024 and 7% in 2025, reaching 33.7 million 8-inch (200mm) wafers per month, according to SEMI‘s latest World Fab Forecast report. Leading-edge capacity for 5nm nodes and below is expected to grow by 13% in 2024, driven by AI demand for data center applications. Additionally, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC will begin producing 2nm chips using gate-all-around (GAA) FETs next year, boosting leading-edge capacity by 17% in 2025.
At the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology & Circuits, imec introduced:
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Wolfspeed postponed plans to construct a $3 billion chip plant in Germany, underscoring the EU‘s challenges in boosting semiconductor production, reports Reuters. The North Carolina-based company cited reduced capital spending due to a weakened EV market, saying it now aims to start construction in mid-2025, two years later than 0riginally planned.
Micron is building a pilot production line for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in the U.S., and considering HBM production in Malaysia to meet growing AI demand, according to a Nikkei report. The company is expanding HBM R&D facilities in Boise, Idaho, and eyeing production capacity in Malaysia, while also enhancing its largest HBM facility in Taichung, Taiwan.
Kioxia restored its Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants in Japan to full capacity, ending production cuts as the memory market recovers, according to Nikkei. The company, which is focusing on NAND flash production, has secured new bank credit support, including refinancing a ¥540 billion loan and establishing a ¥210 billion credit line. Kioxia had reduced output by more than 30% in October 2022 due to weak smartphone demand.
Europe’s NATO Innovation Fund announced its first direct investments, which includes semiconductor materials. Twenty-three NATO allies co-invested in this over $1B fund devoted to address critical defense and security challenges.
The second meeting of the U.S.–India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) was held in New Delhi, with various funding and initiatives announced to support semiconductor technology, next-gen telecommunications, connected and autonomous vehicles, ML, and more.
Amazon announced investments of €10 billion in Germany to drive innovation and support the expansion of its logistics network and cloud infrastructure.
Quantum Machines opened the Israeli Quantum Computing Center (IQCC) research facility, backed by the Israel Innovation Authority and located at Tel Aviv University. Also, Israel-based Classiq is collaborating with NVIDIA and BMW, using quantum computing to find the optimal automotive architecture of electrical and mechanical systems.
Global data center vacancy rates are at historic lows, and power availability is becoming less available, according to a Siemens report featured on Broadband Breakfast. The company called for an influx of financing to find new ways to optimize data center technology and sustainability.
Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:
More reporting this week:
Renesas completed its acquisition of Transphorm and will immediately start offering GaN-based power products and reference designs to meet the demand for wide-bandgap (WBG) chips.
Revenues for the top five wafer fab equipment (WFE) companies fell 9% YoY in Q1 2024, according to Counterpoint. This was offset partially by increased demand for NAND and DRAM, which increased 33% YoY, and strong growth in sales to China, which were up 116% YoY.
The SiC power devices industry saw robust growth in 2023, primarily driven by the BEV market, according to TrendForce. The top five suppliers, led by ST with a 32.6% market share and onsemi in second place, accounted for 91.9% of total revenue. However, the anticipated slowdown in BEV sales and weakening industrial demand are expected to significantly decelerate revenue growth in 2024.
About 30% of vehicles produced globally will have E/E architectures with zonal controllers by 2032, according to McKinsey & Co. The market for automotive micro-components and logic semiconductors is predicted to reach $60 billion in 2032, and the overall automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow from $60 billion to $140 billion in the same period, at a 10% CAGR.
The automotive processor market generated US$20 billion in revenue in 2023, according to Yole. US$7.8 billion was from APUs and FPGAs and $12.2 billion was from MCUs. The ADAS and infotainment processors market was worth US$7.8 billion in 2023 and is predicted to grow to $16.4 billion by 2029 at a 13% CAGR. The market for ADAS sensing is expected to grow at a 7% CAGR.
The CHERI Alliance was established to drive adoption of memory safety and scalable software compartmentalization via the security technology CHERI, or Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions. Founding members include Capabilities Limited, Codasip, the FreeBSD Foundation, lowRISC, SCI Semiconductor, and the University of Cambridge.
In security research:
Post-quantum cryptography firm PQShield raised $37 million in Series B funding.
Former OpenAI executive, Ilya Sutskever, who quit over safety concerns, launched Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI).
EU industry groups warned the European Commission that its proposed cybersecurity certification scheme (EUCS) for cloud services should not discriminate against Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, reported Reuters.
Cyber Europe tested EU cyber preparedness in the energy sector by simulating a series of large-scale cyber incidents in an exercise organized by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a number of alerts/advisories.
New York non-profit NY CREATES and South Korea’s National Nano Fab Center partnered to develop a hub for joint research, aligned technology services, testbed support, and an engineer exchange program to bolster chips-centered R&D, workforce development, and each nation’s high-tech ecosystem.
New York and the Netherlands agreed on a partnership to promote sustainability within the semiconductor industry, enhance workforce development, and boost semiconductor R&D.
Rapidus is set to send 200 engineers to AI chip developer Tenstorrent in the U.S. for training over the next five years, reports Nikkei. This initiative, led by Japan’s Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC), aims to bolster Japan’s AI chip industry.
UMC announced its 22nm embedded high voltage (eHV) technology platform for premium smartphone and mobile device displays. The 22eHV platform reduces core device power consumption by up to 30% compared to previous 28nm processes. Die area is reduced by 10% with the industry’s smallest SRAM bit cells.
Alphawave Semi announced a new 9.2 Gbps HBM3E sub-system silicon platform capable of 1.2 terabytes per second. Based on the HBM3E IP, the sub-system is aimed at addressing the demand for ultra-high-speed connectivity in high-performance compute applications.
Movellus introduced the Aeonic Power product family for on-die voltage regulation, targeting the challenging area of power delivery.
Cadence partnered with Semiwise and sureCore to develop new cryogenic CMOS circuits with possible quantum computing applications. The circuits are based on modified transistors found in the Cadence Spectre Simulation Platform and are capable of processing analog, mixed-signal, and digital circuit simulation and verification at cryogenic temperatures.
Renesas launched R-Car Open Access (RoX), an integrated development platform for software-defined vehicles (SDVs), designed for Renesas R-Car SoCs and MCUs with tools for deployment of AI applications, reducing complexity and saving time and money for car OEMs and Tier 1s.
Infineon released industry-first radiation-hardened 1 and 2 Mb parallel interface ferroelectric-RAM (F-RAM) nonvolatile memory devices, with up to 120 years of data retention at 85-degree Celsius, along with random access and full memory write at bus speeds. Plus, a CoolGaN Transistor 700 V G4 product family for efficient power conversion up to 700 V, ideal for consumer chargers and notebook adapters, data center power supplies, renewable energy inverters, and more.
Ansys adopted NVIDIA’s Omniverse application programming interfaces for its multi-die chip designers. Those APIs will be used for 5G/6G, IoT, AI/ML, cloud computing, and autonomous vehicle applications. The company also announced ConceptEV, an SaaS solution for automotive concept design for EVs.
Fig. 1: Field visualization of 3D-IC with Omniverse. Source: Ansys
QP Technologies announced a new dicing saw for its manufacturing line that can process a full cassette of 300mm wafers 7% faster than existing tools, improving throughput and productivity.
NXP introduced its SAF9xxx of audio DSPs to support the demand for AI-based audio in software-defined vehicles (SDVs) by using Cadence’s Tensilica HiFi 5 DSPs combined with dedicated neural-network engines and hardware-based accelerators.
Avionyx, a provider of software lifecycle engineering in the aerospace and safety-critical systems sector, partnered with Siemens and will leverage its Polarion application lifecycle management (ALM) tool. Also, Dovetail Electric Aviation adopted Siemens Xcelerator to support sustainable aviation.
Researchers from imec and KU Leuven released a +70 page paper “Selecting Alternative Metals for Advanced Interconnects,” addressing interconnect resistance and reliability.
A comprehensive review article — “Future of plasma etching for microelectronics: Challenges and opportunities” — was created by a team of experts from the University of Maryland, Lam Research, IBM, Intel, and many others.
Researchers from the Institut Polytechnique de Paris’s Laboratory of Condensed Matter for Physics developed an approach to investigate defects in semiconductors. The team “determined the spin-dependent electronic structure linked to defects in the arrangement of semiconductor atoms,” the first time this structure has been measured, according to a release.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory-led researchers developed a small enclosed chamber that can hold all the components of an electrochemical reaction, which can be paired with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to generate precise views of a reaction at atomic scale, and can be frozen to stop the reaction at specific time points. They used the technique to study a copper catalyst.
The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approved a clinical trial to test a device with 1,024 nanoscale sensors that records brain activity during surgery, developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego).
Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Standards for Chiplet Design with 3DIC Packaging (Part 2) | Jun 21 | Online |
| DAC 2024 | Jun 23 – 27 | San Francisco |
| RISC-V Summit Europe 2024 | Jun 24 – 28 | Munich |
| Leti Innovation Days 2024 | Jun 25 – 27 | Grenoble, France |
| ISCA 2024 | Jun 29 – Jul 3 | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| SEMICON West | Jul 9 – 11 | San Francisco |
| Flash Memory Summit | Aug 6 – 8 | Santa Clara, CA |
| USENIX Security Symposium | Aug 14 – 16 | Philadelphia, PA |
| Hot Chips 2024 | Aug 25- 27 | Stanford University |
| Find All Upcoming Events Here | ||
Upcoming webinars are here.
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In the summer of 1945, Robert J. Oppenheimer and other key members of the Manhattan Project gathered in New Mexico to witness the first atomic bomb test. Among the observers was Vannevar Bush, who had overseen the Manhattan Project and served as the sole liaison to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on progress toward the bomb.
Remarkably, given his intense wartime responsibilities, Bush continued to develop his own ideas about computing and information. Just days before the Trinity test, he had published in The Atlantic Monthly a futuristic account of networks of information knitted together via “associative trails”—which we would now call hypertext or hyperlinks. To this day, Bush’s article—titled “As We May Think”—and his subsequent elaborations of networked information appliances are credited with shaping what would become the personal computer and the World Wide Web. And during his lifetime, Bush was celebrated as one of the nation’s leading prophets of technological change and the most influential proponent of government funding of science and engineering.
Vannevar Bush’s influential 1945 essay “As We May Think” shaped the subsequent development of the personal computer and the World Wide Web. The Atlantic Monthly
And yet, if you watched this year’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, Bush is only a minor character. Played by actor Matthew Modine, he testifies before a secret government panel that will decide whether Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, should be stripped of his security clearance and banished from participating in future government decisions on sensitive technological issues.
“Try me, if you want to try him,” Bush defiantly tells the panel. Alas, tragedy unfolds when the panel punishes Oppenheimer for his opposition to testing the nation’s first hydrogen bomb. No more is said about Bush, even though he also opposed the first H-bomb test, on the grounds that the test, held on 1 November 1952, would help the Soviet Union build its own superweapon and accelerate a nuclear arms race. Bush was spared sanction and continued to serve in government, while Oppenheimer became a pariah.
Today, though, Oppenheimer is lionized while Bush is little known outside a small circle of historians, computer scientists, and policy thinkers. And yet, Bush’s legacy is without a doubt the more significant one for engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs, and public policymakers. He died at the age of 84 on 28 June 1974, and the 50th anniversary of his death seems like a good time to reflect on all that Vannevar Bush did to harness technological innovation as the chief source of economic, political, and military power for the United States and other leading nations.
Beginning in 1940, and with the ear of the president and leading scientific and engineering organizations, Vannevar Bush promoted the importance of supporting all aspects of research, including in universities, the military, and industry. Bush’s vision was shaped by World War II and America’s need to rapidly mobilize scientists and engineers for war fighting and defense. And it deepened during the long Cold War.
Bush’s pivotal contribution was his creation of the “research contract,” whereby public funds are awarded to civilian scientists and engineers based on effort, not just outcomes (as had been normal before World War II). This freedom to try new things and take risks transformed relations between government, business, and academia. By the end of the war, Bush’s research organization was spending US $3 million a week (about $52 million in today’s dollars) on some 6,000 researchers, most of them university professors and corporate engineers.
On its 3 April 1944 cover, Time called Vannevar Bush the “General of Physics,” for his role in accelerating wartime R&D.Ernest Hamlin Baker/TIME
Celebrated as the “general of physics” on the cover of Time magazine in 1944, Bush served as the first research chief of the newly created Department of Defense in 1947. Three years later, he successfully advocated for the creation of a national science foundation, to nourish and sustain civilian R&D. In launching his campaign for the foundation, Bush issued a report, entitled Science, The Endless Frontier, in which he argued that the nation’s future prosperity and the American spirit of “frontier” exploration depended on advances in science and engineering.
Bush’s influence went well beyond the politics of research and the mobilization of technology for national security. He was also a business innovator. In the 1920s, he cofounded Raytheon, and the company competed with behemoth RCA in the design and manufacture of vacuum tubes. As a professor and later dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he crafted incentives for professors to consult part time for business, setting in motion in the 1920s and 1930s practices now considered essential to science-based industry.
Bush’s beliefs influenced Frederick Terman, a doctoral student of his, to join Stanford University, where Terman played a decisive role in the birth of Silicon Valley. Another Bush doctoral student, Claude Shannon, joined Bell Labs and founded information theory. As a friend and trusted adviser to Georges Doriot, Bush helped launch one of the first venture capital firms, American Research and Development Corp.
Starting in the 1920s, Bush began designing analog computing machines, known as differential analyzers. This version was at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland.MIT Museum
But wait, there’s more! Bush was a major figure in the early history of modern computing. In the 1930s, he gained prestige as the designer of a room-size analog computing machine known as the “differential analyzer,” then considered the most powerful calculating machine on the planet. It was visually impressive enough that UCLA’s differential analyzer had a major cameo in the 1951 sci-fi movie When Worlds Collide.
In the 1940s, despite his busy schedule with the Manhattan Project, Bush set aside time to envision and build working models of a desktop “memory extender,” or memex, to assist professionals in managing information and making decisions. And, as mentioned, he published that pivotal Atlantic article.
For engineers, Bush carries a special significance because of his passionate arguments throughout his life that all engineers—especially electrical engineers—deserve the same professional status as doctors, lawyers, and judges. Before World War II, engineers were viewed chiefly as workers for hire who did what they were told by their employers, but Bush eloquently insisted that engineers possessed professional rights and obligations and that they delivered their expert judgments independently and, when feasible, with the public interest in mind.
Vannevar Bush considered engineering not just a job but a calling. John Lent/AP
From the distance of a half century, Bush’s record as a futurist was mixed. He failed to envision the enormous expansion of both digital processing power and storage. He loudly proclaimed that miniaturized analog images stored on microfilm would long provide ample storage. (To be fair, many old microfilm and microfiche archives remain readable, unlike, say, digital video disks and old floppies.)
And yet, Bush’s ideas about the future of information have proved prescient. He believed, for example, that human consciousness could be enhanced through computational aids and that the automation of routine cognitive tasks could liberate human minds to concentrate and solve more difficult problems.
In this regard, Bush prefigures later computing pioneers like Douglas Engelbart (inventor of the mouse) and Larry Page (cofounder of Google), who promoted the concept of human “augmentation” through innovative digital means, such as hypertext and search, and enhancing the speed, accuracy, and depth of purposeful thought. Indeed, today’s debate over the harm to humans from generative AI could benefit from Bush’s own calm assessment about the creative, intellectual, and artistic benefits to be gained from “the revolution in machines to reduce mental drudgery.” The subject of human enhancement through digital systems was “almost constantly” on his mind, he wrote in his 1970 memoir, Pieces of the Action, four years before his death. Bush cautioned against hysteria in the face of digitally mediated cognitive enhancements. And he insisted that our technological systems should maintain the proverbial “human in the loop,” in order to honor and safeguard our values in the tricky management of digital information systems.
The fate of human culture and values was not Bush’s only worry. In his later life, he fretted about the spread of nuclear weapons and the risk of their use. Fittingly, as the titular head of the Manhattan Project and, in the 1950s, an opponent of testing the first H-bomb, he saw nuclear weapons as an existential threat to all life on the planet.
Bush identified no ultimate solutions to these problems. Having done so much to enhance and solidify the role of scientists and engineers in the advancement of society, he nevertheless foresaw an uncertain world, where scientific and technological outcomes would also continue to challenge us.
Pod přezdívkou TWISTEN ho znaly tisíce fanoušků po celém světě, kteří dodnes truchlí nad jeho ztrátou. Aby pomohla ostatním s psychickými problémy, rozhodla se jeho rodina založit nadační fond Twisten Foundation, který už přes půl roku denně pomáhá dospívajícím trpícími úzkostí nebo depresemi.
Karel Ašenbrener se narodil 4. 12. 2003 v Praze a už od malička ho bavilo závodění i počítačové hry. V roce 2020 začal hrát multiplayerovou střílečku Valorant, ve které rychle dosahoval neuvěřitelných výsledků. Díky svému talentu i tvrdé dřině si vybojoval cestu až do dvou největších českých esportových organizací, Entropiq a eSuby, historicky nejúspěšnějšího profesionálního herního týmu v České republice.
Jeho nadání si ale brzy začali všímat i v zahraničí. Netrvalo dlouho a Twisten začal hrát za organizace světového formátu. Nejprve byl součástí německého BIG, a poté francouzské organizace Vitality. Jeho velký sen o tom, že se bude účastnit největších světových turnajů se mu tak splnil. Pod přezdívkou TWISTEN ho znaly tisíce fanoušků po celém světě.
„Kája byl tak trochu šašek, miloval turnaje, které se odehrávaly přímo na stage, miloval své fanoušky i publikum. Během přestávek používal gesta, jako srdíčko, korejský symbol pro lásku nebo kočičí ouška. Svým láskyplným přístupem se gamingové komunitě neodmyslitelně zapsal do paměti a mnoho fanoušků si k němu vytvořilo opravdové pouto,“ vzpomíná Twistenova maminka Ivana Ašenbrenerová.
Na začátku roku 2023 se Twisten přiznal k tomu, že bojuje s depresemi a pomohl tak rozproudit diskusi o mentálním zdraví v esportu. Otevřeně mluvil o tom, že navštěvuje odborníky a léčí se. Svůj boj s depresemi bohužel prohrál a 7. června 2023 se rozhodl ukončit svůj život, což znamenalo tvrdou ránu nejen pro jeho rodinu a fanoušky, ale také pro celý svět esportu.
Twistenův příběh inspiroval spoustu lidí a českých i zahraničních institucí, aby se více mluvilo o mentálním zdraví. Rodina Karla se k uctění jeho památky rozhodla založit nadační fond Twisten Foundation, který pomáhá mladým s psychickými problémy.
Za méně než sedm měsíců se Twisten Foundation povedlo rozproudit diskusi na půdě Poslanecké sněmovny na téma duševního zdraví dospívajících. Spustili také širokou škálu projektů určené teenagerům a jejich rodičům. Pro mladé, kteří prožívají krizi nebo se potýkají s duševními problémy jsou určeny online chaty s psychology. „Na odbornou pomoc dospívající často čekají i měsíce. Díky těmto chatům si však mohou ihned, anonymně a zdarma promluvit s psychology vyškolenými v krizové intervenci,“ objasňuje projekt #KAREme ředitelka nadace Denisa Stránská.
Spoustu rad od odborníků i hráčů, kteří mají zkušenosti s depresemi, najdou také v podcastech #KAREtalk na YouTube i Spotify nebo v rámci živých workshopů. Pro rodiče dětí trpícími psychickými problémy jsou pak určeny online sezení s psychology #KAREwe, kde najdou cenné informace i porozumění.
Twisten Foundation je nadační fond, který chce podporovat mentální zdraví teenagerů. Na počest Karla Twistena Ašenbrenera ho založila jeho rodina. Jeden z nejtalentovanějších českých esportových hráčů si totiž začátkem června roku 2023 vzal kvůli psychickým potížím život. Nadační fond chce tak pomáhat dospívajícím, kteří se nacházejí v podobných situacích, jako Karel Ašenbrener. Průzkum Národního ústavu duševního zdraví ukazuje, že psychický stav mladých je velmi špatný. U každého třetího deváťáka v Česku se projevují znaky, které ukazují na středně těžké až těžké úzkosti. Čtyři z deseti navíc mají známky středně těžké až těžké deprese. Podle ČSÚ si v roce 2022 v Česku vzalo život 1302 osob. Tato statistika roste nejrychleji právě u mladých lidí. Sebevražda je nyní důvodem čtvrtiny všech úmrtí ve věkové kategorii 15 až 24 let.
Článek Před rokem zemřel uznávaný český esportový hráč Twisten. Jeho rodina nabízí pomoc teenagerům s psychickými problémy se nejdříve objevil na GAME PRESS.
On 22 May 2024, we announced that we are intending to list the Foundation’s commercial subsidiary, Raspberry Pi Ltd, on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange. This is called an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
The IPO process is — quite rightly — highly regulated, and information about the company and the potential listing can be found on the Investor Portal on Raspberry Pi Ltd’s website. If that’s what you’re looking for, head there.
In this blog post, I want to explain what an IPO of Raspberry Pi Ltd would mean for the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation was founded in 2008 as a UK-based educational charity. Our co-founders wanted to inspire more young people to explore the joys of coding and creating with technology, with the goal of increasing both the number and diversity of kids choosing to study computer science and engineering.
Their idea was to create a low-cost, programmable computer that could rekindle some of the excitement sparked in young minds at the start of the personal computing revolution by platforms like the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum (incidentally also invented in Cambridge, UK).
Raspberry Pi Ltd was incorporated in 2012 as the commercial subsidiary of the Foundation and is responsible for all aspects of design, production, and distribution of Raspberry Pi computers and associated technologies. It has always been a commercial company, albeit one that was initially wholly owned by a charity.
It’s fairly common for UK charities to have subsidiaries that handle their commercial activities. Guidance from the regulator, the Charity Commission, explains that it helps protect the charity’s assets and ensures that the charity benefits from tax relief on profits that are generated from commercial activities and used to advance the charity’s objectives.
So Raspberry Pi has pretty much always been a tale of two organisations: the Foundation, which is a charity, and Raspberry Pi Ltd, which is a commercial company. While we are legally and practically separate organisations, we are united by a mission to democratise computing, and by a set of values that reflect the community of makers, engineers, and educators that have always been such a central part of the Raspberry Pi story.
In the years since the launch of the first Raspberry Pi computer in 2012, Raspberry Pi Ltd has continued to innovate and expand its range of products, evolving into a leading provider of high-performance, single-board computers and associated technologies for industrial and embedded uses, as well as for enthusiasts and educators, in markets worldwide. For more information on the company and all it has achieved, you should take a look at the Investor Portal.
For me, one of the most important things about a Raspberry Pi computer is that kids are learning to code on the same platform that is used by the world’s leading engineers and scientists. It’s not a toy, although it is a lot of fun.
Crucially, the commitment to low-cost computing that was at the heart of Raspberry Pi’s founding ethos remains unchanged and has been enshrined in a legally binding agreement between the Foundation and the company. This means that Raspberry Pi will always produce low-cost, general-purpose computers that can be used for teaching and learning.
Over that same period, the Foundation has innovated and expanded its educational products and learning experiences to the point where we are now widely recognised as one of the world’s leading contributors to the democratisation of computing education.
We create curricula and classroom resources that are used in schools all over the globe, covering everything from basic digital skills to computer science and AI literacy. We provide high-quality professional development for teachers and we build software tools that reduce barriers, save time, and improve learning outcomes. We also support the world’s largest network of free coding clubs and inspire young people to get creative with tech through showcases and challenges. All of this is completely free for teachers and students wherever they are in the world.
We are also advancing the field of computing education through undertaking original research and translating evidence of what works into practice.
Importantly, the Foundation is device- and platform-agnostic. That means that, while Raspberry Pi computers make a huge contribution to our educational mission, you don’t need to use a Raspberry Pi computer to engage with our learning experiences and resources.
The proposed IPO is all about securing the next stage of growth and impact for both the Foundation and the commercial company.
To date, Raspberry Pi Ltd has donated nearly $50m from its profits to the Foundation, which we have used to advance our educational mission combined with over $60m in funding from philanthropy, sponsorship, and contracts for educational services.
As the company has continued to grow, it has needed working capital and funding to invest in innovation and product development. Over the past few years that has mainly come from retained profits. Listing Raspberry Pi Ltd on a public market will enable the company to raise additional capital through issuing new shares, which will lead to broader reach, greater impact, and ultimately more value being created for the benefit of all shareholders, including the Foundation.
From the Foundation’s perspective, an IPO provides us with the ability to sell some of our shares to raise money to finance a sustainable expansion of our educational activities. Put simply, instead of receiving a share of the company’s profits each year, we will convert some of our shareholding into an endowment that we will use to fund our educational programmes.
Assuming we proceed with the IPO, what is now Raspberry Pi Ltd will become a public company that trades its shares on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange.
The Foundation will remain a significant shareholder and we will continue to share the Raspberry Pi brand. We will be involved in decision making on the same basis as all other shareholders. Our goal will be to support the company to be as successful as possible in its mission to make computing accessible and affordable for everybody.
The Foundation will use any funds that we raise through the sale of shares at the IPO — or subsequently — to advance our ambitious global strategy to enable every young person to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies.
Partnership will continue to be at the heart of our strategy and we will work closely with businesses, foundations, and governments to ensure that our work reaches as many teachers and young people as possible. Our ambition is that around 50% of our activities will be funded from the endowment and 50% through partnerships and donations, enabling us to reach many more teachers and students by combining our resources and expertise with those of the many partners who share our mission.
Whatever happens with the IPO, Raspberry Pi has already had a huge impact on the world. It’s been an enormous privilege to be part of the journey so far, and I am hugely excited about the potential of this next phase.
I want to pay tribute to all of our co-founders for setting us off on this great adventure, and particularly to Jack Lang, who very sadly passed away earlier this month. Jack made an exceptional and unique contribution to the Raspberry Pi story, and he deserves to go down in history as one of the most significant figures in computing education in the UK. I know he would have shared my excitement about this next chapter in the Raspberry Pi story.
With the pace of technological advances in fields like AI, our mission has never been more vital. We have the potential to positively impact the lives of tens of millions of young people who might otherwise miss out on the opportunity to change the world for the better through technology.
The post What would an IPO mean for the Raspberry Pi Foundation? appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The /e/OS Foundation has been offering a de-Googled version of Android since 2018, with an emphasis on privacy and security. Now developers have introduced the biggest update in years. Among other things, /e/OS 2.0 brings support for Android Auto, an updated launcher app with support for live wallpapers and app notifications on icons, and other […]
The post De-Googled Android operating system /e/OS V2 brings Android Auto support, UI and privacy enhancements appeared first on Liliputing.
Synopsys refocused its security priorities around chips, striking a deal to sell off its Software Integrity Group subsidiary to private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners for about $2.1 billion. That deal comes on the heels of Synopsys’ recent acquisition of Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable function IP. Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys’ president and CEO, said in an interview that the sale of the software group “gives us the ability to have management bandwidth, capital, and to double down on what we’re doing in our core business.”
The U.S. Commerce Department reportedly pulled export licenses from Intel and Qualcomm that permitted them to ship semiconductors to Huawei, the Financial Times reported. The move comes after advanced chips from Intel reportedly were used in new laptops and smartphones from the China-based company.
Apple debuted its second-generation 3nm M4 chip with the launch of the new iPad Pro. The CPU and GPU each have up to 10 cores, with a neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and a total of 28 billion transistors. Apple also is working with TSMC to develop its own AI processors for running software in data centers, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. is expected to triple its semiconductor manufacturing capacity by 2032, according to a new report by the Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting. By that year, the U.S. is projected to have 28% of global capacity for advanced logic manufacturing and over a quarter of total global capital expenditures.
Fig. 1: Source: Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group.
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The U.S. Commerce Department plans to solicit bids from organizations interested in creating and managing a new CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute focused on digital twins in the semiconductor sector. The government will award up to $285 million to the selected proposal.
The U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy announced the first 35 projects to be supported with computational time through the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot. The initial selected projects will gain access to several U.S. supercomputing centers and other resources, with the goal of advancing responsible AI research.
Through its new Federal AI Sandbox, MITRE is offering up its computing power to U.S. government agencies. “Our new Federal AI Sandbox will help level the playing field, making the high-quality compute power needed to train and test custom AI solutions available to any agency,” stated Charles Clancy, MITRE, senior vice president and chief technology officer, in the release.
Saudi Arabia’s $100 billion investment fund for semiconductor and AI technology pledged it would divest from China if requested by the U.S, reported Bloomberg.
Japan’s SoftBank is holding talks with UK-based AI Chip firm Graphcore about a possible acquisition, reports Bloomberg.
India’s chip industry is heating up. Mindgrove launched the country’s first SoC, named Secure IoT. The chip clocks at 700 MHz, and the company is touting its key security algorithms, secure boot, and on-chip OTP memory. Meanwhile, Lam Research is expanding its global semiconductor fabrication supply chain to include India.
Microsoft will build a $3.3 billion AI data center in Racine, Wisconsin, the same location as the failed Foxconn investment touted six years ago.
The SIA announced first-quarter global semiconductor sales grew more than 15% YoY, still 5.7% below Q4 2023, but a big improvement over last year. Consider that the semiconductor materials market contracted 8.2% in 2023 to $66.7 billion, down from a record $72.7 billion in 2022, according to a new report from SEMI.
The demand for AI-powered consumer electronics will drive global AI chipset shipments to 1.3 billion by 2030, according to ABI Research.
TrendForce released several new industry reports this week. Among the highlights:
A number of acquisitions were announced recently:
The global smartphone market grew 6% year-over-year, shipping 296.9 million units in Q124, according to a Counterpoint report. Samsung toppled Apple for the top spot with a 20% share.
U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud for misleading consumers and investors about its EV’s autopilot capabilities, according to Reuters.
The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a huge transformation toward software-defined vehicles, spurring new architectures that can be future-proofed and customized with software.
Infineon introduced a microcontroller for the automotive battery management sector, integrating high-precision analog and high-voltage subsystems on a single chip. Infineon also inked a deal with China’s Xiaomi to provide SiC power modules for Xiaomi’s new SU7 smart EV.
Keysight and ETAS are teaming up to embed ETAS fuzz testing software into Keysight’s automotive cybersecurity platform.
Also, Keysight’s device security research lab, Riscure Security Solutions, can now conduct vehicle type approval evaluations under United Nations R155/R156 regulations. Keysight acquired Riscure in March.
Two autonomous driving companies received big funding. British AI company Wayve received a $1.05 billion Series C investment from SoftBank, with contributions from NVIDIA and Microsoft. Hyundai spent an additional $475 million on Motional, according its recent earnings report.
The automotive imaging market grew to U.S. $5.7 billion in 2023 due to increased production, autonomy demand, and higher-resolution offerings.
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open source platform for all Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), released cloud-native functionality, RISC-V architecture and flutter applications.
SRAM security concerns are intensifying as a combination of new and existing techniques allow hackers to tap into data for longer periods of time after a device is powered down. This is particularly alarming as the leading edge of design shifts to heterogeneous systems in package, where chiplets frequently have their own memory hierarchy.
Machine learning is being used by hackers to find weaknesses in chips and systems, but it also is starting to be used to prevent breaches by pinpointing hardware and software design flaws.
txOne Networks, provider of Cyber-Physical Systems security, raised $51 million in Series B extension round of funding.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged a Russian national with his role as the creator, developer and administrator of the LockBit, a prolific ramsomware group, that allegedly stole $100 million in payments from 2,000 victims.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched “We Can Secure Our World,” a new public awareness program promoting “basic cyber hygiene” and the agency also issues a number of alerts/advisories.
Siemens unveiled its Solido IP Validation Suite software, an automated quality assurance product designed to work across all design IP types and formats. The suite includes Solido Crosscheck and IPdelta software, which both provide in-view, cross-view and version-to-version QA checks.
proteanTecs announced its lifecycle monitoring solution is being integrated into SAPEON’s new AI processors.
SpiNNcloud Systems revealed their SpiNNaker2 system, an event-based AI platform supercomputer containing chips that are a mesh of 152 ARM-based cores. The platform has the ability to emulate 10 billion neurons while still maintaining power efficiency and reliability.
Ansys partnered with Schrodinger to develop new computational materials. The collaboration will see Schrodinger’s molecular modeling technology used in Ansys’ simulation tools to evaluate performance ahead of the prototype phase.
Keysight introduced a pulse generator to its handheld radio frequency analyzer software options. The Option 357 pulse generator is downloadable on B- and C-Series FieldFox analyzers.
Semiconductor fever is hitting academia:
Arizona State University is beefing up their technology programs with a new bachelor’s and doctoral degree in robotics and autonomous systems.
Microsoft is partnering with Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin to create a Data Center Academy to train Wisconsinites for data center and STEM roles by 2030.
Stanford-led researchers used ordinary-appearing glasses for an augmented reality headset, utilizing waveguide display techniques, holographic imaging, and AI.
UC Berkeley, LLNL, and MIT engineered a miniaturized on-chip energy storage and power delivery, using an atomic-scale approach to modify electrostatic capacitors.
ORNL and other researchers observed a “surprising isotope effect in the optoelectronic properties of a single layer of molybdenum disulfide” when they substituted heavier isotope of molybdenum in the crystal.
Three U.S. national labs are partnering with NVIDIA to develop advanced memory technologies for high performance computing.
In addition to this week’s Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter, here are more top stories and tech talk from the week:
Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| ASMC: Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference | May 13 – 16 | Albany, NY |
| ISES Taiwan 2024: International Semiconductor Executive Summit | May 14 – 15 | New Taipei City |
| Ansys Simulation World 2024 | May 14 – 16 | Online |
| Women In Semiconductors | May 16 | Albany, NY |
| European Test Symposium | May 20 – 24 | The Hague, Netherlands |
| NI Connect Austin 2024 | May 20 – 22 | Austin, Texas |
| ITF World 2024 (imec) | May 21 – 22 | Antwerp, Belgium |
| Embedded Vision Summit | May 21 – 23 | Santa Clara, CA |
| ASIP Virtual Seminar 2024 | May 22 | Online |
| Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) 2024 | May 28 – 31 | Denver, Colorado |
| Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference USA 2024 | May 28 – Jun 1 | Santa Clara, CA |
| Find All Upcoming Events Here | ||
Upcoming webinars are here.
Read the latest special reports and top stories, or check out the latest newsletters:
Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing
Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials
The post Chip Industry Week In Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.
Synopsys refocused its security priorities around chips, striking a deal to sell off its Software Integrity Group subsidiary to private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners for about $2.1 billion. That deal comes on the heels of Synopsys’ recent acquisition of Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable function IP. Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys’ president and CEO, said in an interview that the sale of the software group “gives us the ability to have management bandwidth, capital, and to double down on what we’re doing in our core business.”
The U.S. Commerce Department reportedly pulled export licenses from Intel and Qualcomm that permitted them to ship semiconductors to Huawei, the Financial Times reported. The move comes after advanced chips from Intel reportedly were used in new laptops and smartphones from the China-based company.
Apple debuted its second-generation 3nm M4 chip with the launch of the new iPad Pro. The CPU and GPU each have up to 10 cores, with a neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and a total of 28 billion transistors. Apple also is working with TSMC to develop its own AI processors for running software in data centers, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. is expected to triple its semiconductor manufacturing capacity by 2032, according to a new report by the Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting. By that year, the U.S. is projected to have 28% of global capacity for advanced logic manufacturing and over a quarter of total global capital expenditures.
Fig. 1: Source: Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group.
Quick links to more news:
Global
Market Reports
Automotive
Security
Product News
Education and Training
Research
In-Depth
Events
Further Reading
The U.S. Commerce Department plans to solicit bids from organizations interested in creating and managing a new CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute focused on digital twins in the semiconductor sector. The government will award up to $285 million to the selected proposal.
The U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy announced the first 35 projects to be supported with computational time through the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot. The initial selected projects will gain access to several U.S. supercomputing centers and other resources, with the goal of advancing responsible AI research.
Through its new Federal AI Sandbox, MITRE is offering up its computing power to U.S. government agencies. “Our new Federal AI Sandbox will help level the playing field, making the high-quality compute power needed to train and test custom AI solutions available to any agency,” stated Charles Clancy, MITRE, senior vice president and chief technology officer, in the release.
Saudi Arabia’s $100 billion investment fund for semiconductor and AI technology pledged it would divest from China if requested by the U.S, reported Bloomberg.
Japan’s SoftBank is holding talks with UK-based AI Chip firm Graphcore about a possible acquisition, reports Bloomberg.
India’s chip industry is heating up. Mindgrove launched the country’s first SoC, named Secure IoT. The chip clocks at 700 MHz, and the company is touting its key security algorithms, secure boot, and on-chip OTP memory. Meanwhile, Lam Research is expanding its global semiconductor fabrication supply chain to include India.
Microsoft will build a $3.3 billion AI data center in Racine, Wisconsin, the same location as the failed Foxconn investment touted six years ago.
The SIA announced first-quarter global semiconductor sales grew more than 15% YoY, still 5.7% below Q4 2023, but a big improvement over last year. Consider that the semiconductor materials market contracted 8.2% in 2023 to $66.7 billion, down from a record $72.7 billion in 2022, according to a new report from SEMI.
The demand for AI-powered consumer electronics will drive global AI chipset shipments to 1.3 billion by 2030, according to ABI Research.
TrendForce released several new industry reports this week. Among the highlights:
A number of acquisitions were announced recently:
The global smartphone market grew 6% year-over-year, shipping 296.9 million units in Q124, according to a Counterpoint report. Samsung toppled Apple for the top spot with a 20% share.
U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud for misleading consumers and investors about its EV’s autopilot capabilities, according to Reuters.
The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a huge transformation toward software-defined vehicles, spurring new architectures that can be future-proofed and customized with software.
Infineon introduced a microcontroller for the automotive battery management sector, integrating high-precision analog and high-voltage subsystems on a single chip. Infineon also inked a deal with China’s Xiaomi to provide SiC power modules for Xiaomi’s new SU7 smart EV.
Keysight and ETAS are teaming up to embed ETAS fuzz testing software into Keysight’s automotive cybersecurity platform.
Also, Keysight’s device security research lab, Riscure Security Solutions, can now conduct vehicle type approval evaluations under United Nations R155/R156 regulations. Keysight acquired Riscure in March.
Two autonomous driving companies received big funding. British AI company Wayve received a $1.05 billion Series C investment from SoftBank, with contributions from NVIDIA and Microsoft. Hyundai spent an additional $475 million on Motional, according its recent earnings report.
The automotive imaging market grew to U.S. $5.7 billion in 2023 due to increased production, autonomy demand, and higher-resolution offerings.
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open source platform for all Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), released cloud-native functionality, RISC-V architecture and flutter applications.
SRAM security concerns are intensifying as a combination of new and existing techniques allow hackers to tap into data for longer periods of time after a device is powered down. This is particularly alarming as the leading edge of design shifts to heterogeneous systems in package, where chiplets frequently have their own memory hierarchy.
Machine learning is being used by hackers to find weaknesses in chips and systems, but it also is starting to be used to prevent breaches by pinpointing hardware and software design flaws.
txOne Networks, provider of Cyber-Physical Systems security, raised $51 million in Series B extension round of funding.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged a Russian national with his role as the creator, developer and administrator of the LockBit, a prolific ramsomware group, that allegedly stole $100 million in payments from 2,000 victims.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched “We Can Secure Our World,” a new public awareness program promoting “basic cyber hygiene” and the agency also issues a number of alerts/advisories.
Siemens unveiled its Solido IP Validation Suite software, an automated quality assurance product designed to work across all design IP types and formats. The suite includes Solido Crosscheck and IPdelta software, which both provide in-view, cross-view and version-to-version QA checks.
proteanTecs announced its lifecycle monitoring solution is being integrated into SAPEON’s new AI processors.
SpiNNcloud Systems revealed their SpiNNaker2 system, an event-based AI platform supercomputer containing chips that are a mesh of 152 ARM-based cores. The platform has the ability to emulate 10 billion neurons while still maintaining power efficiency and reliability.
Ansys partnered with Schrodinger to develop new computational materials. The collaboration will see Schrodinger’s molecular modeling technology used in Ansys’ simulation tools to evaluate performance ahead of the prototype phase.
Keysight introduced a pulse generator to its handheld radio frequency analyzer software options. The Option 357 pulse generator is downloadable on B- and C-Series FieldFox analyzers.
Semiconductor fever is hitting academia:
Arizona State University is beefing up their technology programs with a new bachelor’s and doctoral degree in robotics and autonomous systems.
Microsoft is partnering with Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin to create a Data Center Academy to train Wisconsinites for data center and STEM roles by 2030.
Stanford-led researchers used ordinary-appearing glasses for an augmented reality headset, utilizing waveguide display techniques, holographic imaging, and AI.
UC Berkeley, LLNL, and MIT engineered a miniaturized on-chip energy storage and power delivery, using an atomic-scale approach to modify electrostatic capacitors.
ORNL and other researchers observed a “surprising isotope effect in the optoelectronic properties of a single layer of molybdenum disulfide” when they substituted heavier isotope of molybdenum in the crystal.
Three U.S. national labs are partnering with NVIDIA to develop advanced memory technologies for high performance computing.
In addition to this week’s Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter, here are more top stories and tech talk from the week:
Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| ASMC: Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference | May 13 – 16 | Albany, NY |
| ISES Taiwan 2024: International Semiconductor Executive Summit | May 14 – 15 | New Taipei City |
| Ansys Simulation World 2024 | May 14 – 16 | Online |
| Women In Semiconductors | May 16 | Albany, NY |
| European Test Symposium | May 20 – 24 | The Hague, Netherlands |
| NI Connect Austin 2024 | May 20 – 22 | Austin, Texas |
| ITF World 2024 (imec) | May 21 – 22 | Antwerp, Belgium |
| Embedded Vision Summit | May 21 – 23 | Santa Clara, CA |
| ASIP Virtual Seminar 2024 | May 22 | Online |
| Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) 2024 | May 28 – 31 | Denver, Colorado |
| Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference USA 2024 | May 28 – Jun 1 | Santa Clara, CA |
| Find All Upcoming Events Here | ||
Upcoming webinars are here.
Read the latest special reports and top stories, or check out the latest newsletters:
Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing
Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials
The post Chip Industry Week In Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.
One of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s core values is our focus on impact. This means that we are committed to learning from the best available evidence, and to being rigorous and transparent about the difference we’re making.
Like many charities, an important part of our approach to achieving and measuring our impact is our theory of change. We are excited to launch a newly refreshed theory of change that reflects our mission and strategy to ensure that young people can realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies.
A theory of change describes the difference an organisation aims to make in the world, the actions it takes to achieve this, and the underlying assumptions about how its actions will create change.
It’s like a good cake recipe. It describes the ingredients and tools that are required, how these are combined, and what the results should be. But a theory of change goes further: it also addresses why you need the cake in the first place, and the reasons why the recipe will produce such a good cake if you follow it correctly!
Our theory of change begins with a statement of the problem that needs solving: too many young people are missing out on the enormous opportunities from digital technologies, and access to opportunities to learn depends too much on who you are and where you were born.
We want to see a world where young people can take advantage of the opportunities that computers and digital technologies offer to transform their own lives and communities, to contribute to society, and to help address the world’s challenges.
To help us empower young people to do this, we have identified three broad sets of outcomes that we should target, measure, and hold ourselves accountable for. These map roughly to the COM-B model of behaviour change. This model suggests that for change to be achieved, people need a combination of capabilities, opportunities, and motivation.
Our identified outcomes are that we support young people to:
We work at multiple levels throughout education systems and society, which together will achieve deep and long-lasting change for young people. We design learning experiences and initiatives that are fun and engaging, including hundreds of free coding and computing projects, the Coolest Projects showcase for young tech creators, and the European Astro Pi Challenge, which gives young people the chance to run their computer programs in space.
We also support teachers, youth workers, volunteers, and parents to develop their skills and knowledge, and equip them to inspire young people and help them learn. For example, The Computing Curriculum provides a complete bank of free lesson plans and other resources, and Experience AI is our educational programme that includes everything teachers need to deliver lessons on artificial intelligence and machine learning in secondary schools.
Finally, we aim to elevate the state of computing education globally by advocating for policy and systems change, and undertaking our own original research to deepen our understanding of how young people learn about computing.
Our theory of change is an important part of our approach to evaluating the impact of our resources and programmes, and it informs all our monitoring and evaluation plans. These plans identify the questions we want to answer, key metrics to monitor, and the data sources we use to understand the impact we’re having and to gather feedback to improve our impact in future.
The theory of change also informs a shared outcomes framework that we are applying consistently across all of our products. This framework supports planning and helps keep us focused as we consider new opportunities to further our mission.
A final role our theory of change plays is to help communicate our mission to other stakeholders, and explain how we can work with our partners and communities to achieve change.
You can read our new theory of change here and if you have any questions or feedback on it, please do get in touch.
The post Our new theory of change appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Before the start of the state legislative session in January, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, proposed a plan to heavily regulate the state's universal education savings account (ESA) program. Her proposal aims to make private schools comply with some of the same standards adhered to by public schools, including requiring that private school teachers meet "minimum education requirements" before teaching ESA students and that private schools provide special education students the same services they had received in public schools. Additionally, she wants to require that students attend public schools for 100 days before receiving an ESA and for the state to audit expenditures at choice-participating private schools.
Hobbs's plan is an attempt to stifle Arizona's booming ESA program and bureaucratize private schools into operating much like the public schools that ESA students already opted out of. It also comes on the heels of a failed attempt to repeal the state's ESA program last year. Like last year, the state's Republican-controlled legislature is unlikely to go along with her measures and already killed one of the bills sponsored by Hobbs allies before it made it to committee in February.
Hobbs will find it difficult to rein in school choice in Arizona—not just because so many families are benefiting from it, but students also made impressive academic improvements while choice expanded over the past two decades.
National and state level trends in student achievement, public school staffing, and education funding for all 50 states are detailed in Public Education at a Crossroads, a new study by the Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this magazine). Because of lags in when the federal data are published, the paper only covers trends prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2003–2019, Arizona students made substantial gains across the board on student achievement as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), better known as the Nation's Report Card. Across fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP scores for reading and math, Arizona ranks in the top ten in achievement growth when compared to other states, except for fourth-grade math scores for low-income students, where it ranks 14th. Fourth-grade scores for reading and math grew by 7 and 9 points, respectively. Eighth-grade scores on reading and math improved by 4 and 9 points.
The NAEP improvements are even more pronounced for low-income students. For Arizona students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches, fourth-grade reading and math scores grew by 8 and 9 points, respectively, and eighth-grade reading and math scores grew by 7 and 12 points.
Arizona also managed to improve student achievement while eschewing the conventional demands for more money and smaller class sizes in public schools. In 2002–2020, per-student revenues for public education only grew in inflation-adjusted terms from $10,353 to $10,790, a 4.2 percent increase that ranks the state 47th nationally in per-student revenue growth. Nor has the state prioritized reducing class sizes or adding support staff: Despite enrollment growth of 25 percent in 2002–2020, Arizona's public school staff only grew by 13.7 percent over the same timeframe. By comparison, public schools nationwide added staff at more than twice the rate of student enrollment growth.
Instead, Arizona spent the past few decades extending a breadth of education options to families. It was an early adopter of charter schools and public school open enrollment in 1994. The state also established the nation's first tax credit scholarship program in 1997 and the nation's first ESA program in 2011. Beginning in 2022, Arizona's ESA program, which was initially only available for students with disabilities, expanded to universal student eligibility and now serves over 75,000 students. Charter schools currently serve more than 20 percent of the state's public school population, a larger proportion than any other state.
Over this period, educational approaches that would be considered experimental in other states have matured and found comfortable niches in Arizona. Arizona Autism Charter Schools, currently with four campuses, specialize in serving kids with autism spectrum disorder and have been operating since 2013. Many of the state's other well-established charters have diverse instructional approaches including Montessori, STEM-focused, and classical education. There's even an environmental sustainability focused charter school for Navajo children in rural Arizona. Prenda, the popular microschool management platform, supports 149 private and charter-partnered microschools in Arizona. In Phoenix, the Black Mothers Forum adapted Prenda's model to better fit the needs of black families early in the pandemic.
To be sure, Arizona students don't fare as well in absolute NAEP rankings. For instance, the state's fourth-graders rank 44th and 36th nationally in overall reading and math scores. But it's hard to know the extent to which greater investments in public education would have led to better outcome growth in Arizona. Consider New York, which led the nation in per-student revenue growth in 2002–2020—increasing from $18,054 to $30,723, or 70.2 percent. Despite those massive funding increases, New York students made almost no NAEP gains over that period. In fact, Arizona's low-income students outscore New York's low-income students in fourth- and eighth-grade math.
The fact that students have gained academic ground in Arizona's choice-rich, fiscally conservative context cuts against Hobbs's attempt to hamper the state's ESA program. Parents in the Grand Canyon state have already proven themselves capable of holding schools accountable without her help.
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In honor of the IEEE Foundation’s 50th anniversary, 16 February has been established as IEEE Foundation Day—a Celebration of the Heart. The theme reflects the Foundation’s vision of being the heart of IEEE’s charitable giving and philanthropy.
On 16 February 1973, IEEE launched its philanthropic partner. The Foundation, initially established to accept and manage donations in support of the IEEE Awards Program, since has raised over US $135 million for more than 250 IEEE programs that improve access to technology, enhance technological literacy, and support education.
For over 50 years, that first seed has been watered with members’ passion, values, and care. The Foundation’s work has blossomed into meaningful, real-world impact.
IEEE Foundation Day recognizes the donors and volunteers who make IEEE philanthropic programs possible, as well as their beneficiaries whose lives have been transformed.
The event is a tremendous opportunity for the IEEE community to celebrate the significant achievements enabled by the generous support of IEEE volunteers and donors.
Volunteers, donors, and beneficiaries who would like to share how the IEEE Foundation has impacted them can do so on its Kudoboard. I invite you to join me in sharing your story.
Outstanding impacts have been made across all five of the Foundation’s focus areas, or pillars, where contributions are directed. The pillars are illuminate, educate, engage, energize, and future.
Generous donors support these current programs:
Illuminate. IEEE Smart Village supports business-development projects that integrate renewable energy, educational opportunities, and entrepreneurship development to empower energy-impoverished communities around the world. The projects, tailored to meet the needs of each community, leverage the power of technology to make a positive impact with the help of local organizations and dedicated volunteers. With nearly 200 projects established across sub-Saharan Africa, India, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, IEEE Smart Village has benefited more than 1.4 million people.
Educate. IEEE TryEngineering provides educators, preuniversity students, and volunteers with activities, lesson plans, and other resources to help engage and inspire the next generation of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professionals. Last year its STEM Grant Program provided financial support to 43 initiatives that provide educational opportunities and hands-on experiences to preuniversity students in underserved communities worldwide.
Engage. The IEEE History Center was one of the earliest programs to partner with the IEEE Foundation. The center, which was set up in preparation to celebrate IEEE’s centennial in 1984, preserves and promotes the history of technology, the engineering profession, and IEEE.
Last year it piloted an exhibit as part of the new IEEE Global Museum initiative, which brings museum-quality exhibits to IEEE members and the public at IEEE events. The exhibit centered around Edwin H. Armstrong, the first IEEE Medal of Honor recipient.
Energize. IEEE Eta-Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) has received Foundation support since it merged with IEEE in 2010. Last year IEEE’s honor society increased the number of student chapter support grants approved by 200 percent over the previous year. The achievement has allowed chapters worldwide to enhance their IEEE-HKN experience and serve the communities around them.
Future. IEEE Women In Engineering is a global network dedicated to promoting female engineers and scientists, and to inspiring girls to pursue careers in STEM. Last year IEEE WIE established its Family Cares grant program, which provides financial support to people of any gender who care for family members so they can attend IEEE conferences.
I am thrilled to celebrate 50 years of the IEEE Foundation and the immense impact philanthropic support has had on shaping the world through technological advancement. It’s humbling to see how the generosity of our donors has fueled IEEE programs that improve lives.
As we move forward, the IEEE Foundation is excited to work together to attract new donors, forge more partnerships with IEEE programs and societies, and support more transformative initiatives.
The future holds incredible possibilities for technology to improve lives. With the Foundation playing a pivotal role, I am optimistic about harnessing the power of philanthropy to shape a more sustainable, equitable, and technological future for all.
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