BLOCK Issue 4

WE ARE POSSIBLY IN THE MOST DIFFICULT BUSINESS CLIMATE SINCE THE GREAT
DEPRESSION. AS COVID-19 SWEEPS ACROSS THE GLOBE, TURING INDUSTRIES IS POISED
TO KICK OFF A NEW WORLD OF TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION. FROM THE TESLA
GIGA SHANGHAI TO THE TURING SEMICONDUCTOR TERA-FAB, THE EAST IS QUIETLY
BREWING THE WORLD’S NEXT CENTER OF INNOVATION. STEVE CHAO, CHIEF OF
TURING INDUSTRIES, GIVES AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW FOR THIS ISSUE’S COVER STORY.
WHAT EXACTLY IS TURING INDUSTRIES?
I founded the Turing brand back in 2015 and experimented with a
consumer electronics project called Turing Phone. Having gone
through almost three generations of the security-based device,
I turned my attention towards the core underlying technology,
that is the computational chips and software programs which
enable it to be useful. When I say useful, I’m really referring to the
artificial intelligence functions nowadays common amongst those
components powering cameras, maps, music, video, and payments
apps. The focus of Turing Industries has been exactly that and we’ve
been working at the forefront of AI computing research ever since.
PICKING THE NEUROMORPHIC BRAIN
Turing Industries has been working in the neuromorphic
computing space since 2018. We believe the holy grail of achieving
human brain-like neuromorphic computation lies within Inmemory
computing. That is to design a new inference architecture
that emphasizes memory bandwidth and locality by moving less
data faster and with much lower power. To achieve the best results
in artificial intelligence, machine-learning engines must figure out
the fastest inference with the lowest power possible. In-memory
computing works by storing weights in a memory and getting a
multiply-accumulate by accessing the memory with the neuron
activations. This is essentially moving into the analog domain by
utilising the memory cells for analog signals rather than digital
ones in order to drive the power down. The inference then happens
in the memory by taking digital data and turning it into analog
values to drive the memories before it uses analog bit-line output
to be converted back into a digital format. In short, it is a way of
removing the data movement between the CPU and memory.
Therefore, I called it Artificial Memory Intelligence (A.M.I.).
Among the most exciting aspects of neuromorphic computing
is the notion of speed advancement for both mobile and
edge computing tasks, as well as the possibility of improving
blockchain consensus algorithms. Some of the most promising
research and development in neuromorphic computing involves
redesign of semiconductor chips; prominent players such as IBM
TrueNorth, Intel Loihi, and Manchester University’s SPiNNaker
project have all experimented with a brain-like computing flow
which defies the legacy von Neumann architecture. Turing’s
approach to a non-von Neumann model is to focus on a nonvolatile
memory-based computation chip and integrating it with
an ASIC processor to form a hybrid semiconductor chip.
“ We believe the holy
grail of achieving human
brain-like neuromorphic
computation lies within
In-memory computing ”
SHANGHAI RISING: CHINA’S SILICON COAST
To achieve Artificial Memory Intelligence we plan to build a terafab
producing non-volatile memory technologies for memorybased
neuromorphic computing needs. The first country which
came to mind was China; the country has been beefing up its
semiconductor capabilities over the last decade or so. Turing
Industries hand-picked a few regions in China before it landed in
a special municipality, namely Shanghai. Shanghai, a city with a
population just shy of 25 million, opened up to Turing Industries and
we were brought to the attention of government officials managing
the Shanghai Lin-gang Special Area within the Shanghai Pilot Free
Trade Zone. The area is a well-established industrial zone with
established semiconductor companies and the most famous recent
addition to the area - the Tesla Giga Shanghai factory. The coastal
Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone Lin-gang Special Area may be too
long a name for the average person to remember, hence I coined
the term “Silicon Coast” describing the area’s future advancement
potential in semiconductors and investment opportunities.
16 | #AIBCsummit Issue 4