Development of Technology for Designing Energy-Efficient AI Semiconductor Chips and Systems

The amount of data on networks is explosively increasing due to (1) the sophistication of devices used for information processing, (2) the advancement of digitalization with the advent of ICT/IoT society, (3) the creation of various industries using AI and other technology, (4) the utilization of big data as the basis for such industries, and (5) the development of new information communication technology and infrastructure such as 5G.
NEDO will not only contribute to solving the power problem arising from the ever-increasing volume of information by realizing distributed computing at the edge domain but also lead the revival of the Japanese digital semiconductor industry by promoting the practical application of semiconductor and system technologies with energy saving, high performance, and competitiveness.
By using advanced AI semiconductors and systems, this project aims to contribute to establishing a new industrial infrastructure in addition to maintaining and strengthening international competitiveness through the promotion of digitalization in industrial fields where Japan has strengths and to efficiently process the ever-increasing volume of information.
This project has the objective to promote the technological development of AI semiconductors and systems for utilization in the domain, including edge servers as necessary, mainly for real-time information processing in edge devices in the edge domain, as well as to establish design technologies that enable the development of such semiconductors in a prompt and efficient manner.

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  Outline Description

(1) Development of Innovative AI Semiconductors and Systems

This theme focuses on the development of AI semiconductors and the technological development related to systems that utilize these semiconductors in order to promptly and efficiently realize advanced data processing with AI in the edge domain and the network environment associated with this edge domain.

(2) Development of Design Technology to Accelerate Industrial Application of AI Edge Computing

The focus of this theme is to develop design technology to realize chip design that maximizes performance in a short period of time and combines heterogeneous processors, which is vital for delivering high-performance computing in the edge domain and in the network environment associated with this edge domain.