… building AI chips, intelligent sensors and devices, and compression algorithms that optimize AI and machine learning models for deployment.

Over the past six months the world has been focused on the singular goal of developing treatments, vaccines, and containment strategies but what no one expected was how the tech world would rise to the challenge presented by Covid-19. While front line responders and essential workers put their lives on the line, researchers and scientists turned to artificial intelligence (AI) for answers. In mere months, emerging technologies have been rolled out and leveraged to full effect to vastly boost computing power, dramatically increase access to high-performance computing (HPC), and accelerate research by orders of magnitude. AI and HPC are being leveraged to not only assess and develop treatments but also to create potential vaccines, manage shutdowns and reopenings, analyze and enable access to digital medical records, and even to help develop better face masks. Samsung Semiconductor technology has played a particularly essential role in the fight against Covid-19.

The world's fastest computer runs a Chinese chip, and that fact hasn't escaped notice by the U.S. government. So how does the U.S. government bludgeon the Chinese chip threat? A new U.S. government working group aims to encourage domestic companies to use homegrown chip technology and resist the urge to buy inexpensive Chinese semiconductors. The White House this week established the Semiconductor Working Group, a private-public advisory group that will create policy and research guidelines for semiconductor development. The ultimate goal is to retain U.S. leadership in semiconductor technology.