CHIPS Act: The Leading Edge Gap

With $52.7 billion slated for grants to support Sections 9902 through 9906 of the 2021 National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA), Washington faces daunting next steps to define and execute on a CHIPS Act program to move the U.S. semiconductor industry toward domestic chip supply chain resiliency and manufacturing and technology leadership over the next five years.

With the growing tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the timeline for achieving domestic supply chain resiliency seems to be increasingly urgent. This is especially true for leading-edge manufacturing as the U.S. continues to trail  Asia. There are nontrivial risks that need to be addressed for Washington’s near- and long-term promises for the CHIPS Act to be realized.

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CHIPS Act: A Vital First Step

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, signed Tuesday by President Biden, includes the stated purpose of challenging China’s pursuit of technological and manufacturing leadership in the global semiconductor industry. The bill easily passed both the Senate (64-33) and the House (243-187) with bipartisan support in both houses.

While the passage of the CHIPS Act is a historic achievement that directly addresses the need for chip supply chain resilience add capacity in the U.S., it is also a timely and important commitment to a much longer and comprehensive policy effort to ensure long-term U.S. technology and market share leadership in the vital semiconductor industry.

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C-Suite Insight: What Is the Industrial Edge?

What is the Industrial Edge? This is a topic that is heavily debated in techno circles outside of the industrial domain. Schneider Electric describes the industrial edge as, “the places where digitized industrial assets and human operators are located. Siemens describes it as, “an open, ready-to-use Edge computing platform consisting of Edge devices, Edge apps, Edge connectivity, and an application and device management infrastructure.”

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What is the Value of 5G at the Edge?

Lately, a lot of folks have been questioning the value of 5G at the edge. Can’t we just use Wi-Fi? We can just set up a Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) network for our Internet of Things (IoT) devices and technology. Is 5G even ready to make a difference? I don’t see the difference on my smartphone. These are all very good questions and concerns. So, why does and will 5G matter at the edge?

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Unleash New Capabilities with Innovation at the Intelligent Edge

Innovation is such a generic and overused term. It seems that every organization claims that they are, or aspire to be, innovative. But what does it mean to innovate with all the artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities coming to the edge? What kind of approach should you have to take this expansive and complex thing that is edge computing plus AI to discover opportunities for creating value that was not there before for your business or your customers?

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How Data and AI are Fueling the Intelligent Edge

One of the more exciting things happening across a variety of edges is artificial intelligence. It is becoming more prevalent especially on our consumer devices, but also across a fast-expanding range of IoT devices that are enabling intelligent digital twinning of factory equipment or monitoring of crops in a field.

As AI-capable devices and emerging edge infrastructures foster new concepts in distributed AI architectures, business leaders and the C-suite can expect pockets of opportunity to arise across an increasingly cognitive and intelligent edge.

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How Smart Contracts can Revolutionize the Enterprise Edge

If you hang out in blockchain circles for more than a moment you will undoubtedly hear about smart contracts. In 2017, when blockchain was the disruptive technology du jour, crypto pundits at the time claimed that smart contracts would quickly disintermediate escrow companies, freight forwarders, medical insurance claim processors, financial clearinghouses, and middlemen across all industries. Five years later, none of these “disruptions” have happened nor are they close to happening. Traditional intermediaries continue to enjoy their place in their respective industries. While Ethereum, the crypto network which is the basis for the nascent but heavily hyped DeFi (Decentralized Finance) phenomenon, and the overhyped NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens), has come a long way in terms of market value, few smart contract applications founded on it have scaled to a degree to pose a threat to traditional contractual media or networks.

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Can CXO’s Bank on the Promise of Blockchains?

Today’s CXO is often faced with making decisions before all the aspects of an emerging technology are known. Take for example Blockchain technologies, something that there is a lot of talk about, as well as perceived need, yet still shrouded in mystery. Add to that the intricacies of edge computing and CXOs start to tread in uncertain territories. The potential intersection of edge computing and blockchain deserves a much closer look before CXOs pull the trigger.

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