HSA Foundation Establishes China Regional Committee to Enhance Global Awareness of Heterogeneous Computing

Committee Members Include Leading China Institutes, Universities, and Standards Authorities

Xiamen, Fujian, China, May 11, 2017 – The HSA Foundation has announced the formation of the China Regional Committee (CRC), with founding members comprised of 20 renowned institutes, universities and standards authorities throughout China. With a focus on growing the HSA ecosystem, the CRC's mandate is to enhance the awareness of heterogeneous computing and promote the adoption of standards such as Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) in China. Dr. Xiaodong Zhang, from Huaxia General Processor Technologies, will serve as the CRC's chairman.

"The CRC will help define regional heterogeneous computing needs, obtain advice from local experts, help China market segments become more integrated with continuously expanding HSA technologies, and serve as a gateway for the HSA Foundation to be more proactive and effective in addressing heterogeneous computing opportunities and issues affecting the region," noted Zhang.

"China's fast growing role in semiconductor innovation, combined with its skilled talent base, makes it a strategically advantageous location for the HSA Foundation to establish its first regional committee. Our hope is to accelerate China's heterogeneous computing development in line with the standardization work, as well as to benefit the local industry community with high performance heterogeneous systems with reduced complexity. The establishment of the CRC will help significantly in these efforts," said HSA Foundation President Dr. John Glossner.

"The HSA ecosystem continues to grow rapidly in China and we look forward to further collaborative ventures with our new CRC colleagues," said HSA Foundation Chairman and Managing Director Greg Stoner.

Glossner said that the HSA Foundation is gaining increasing traction, with recently announced HSA compliant products worldwide, the introduction of the HSA 1.1 specification, and other key developments.

The CRC's initial members include CESI, a professional institute for standardization in the field of electronics and IT industry in China under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and organizations that play an influential role in the HSA ecosystem in China, especially in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, AR/VR and many others which require support from heterogeneous processing. Founding members of the CRC include:

China Electronics Standardization Institute (CESI)
Fudan University
- State Key Laboratory of ASIC and System
Hunan Institute of Science and Technology
Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), Chinese Academy of Sciences
Jiangsu Research Center of Software Digital Radio
Nanjing University
- State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Nanjing University of Science and Technology
Nantong University
Peking University
Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shanghai Jiao tong University
Shanghai Research Center for Wireless Communications
Shanghai University
Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- State Key Laboratory of Robotics
Southeast University
- State Key Laboratory of Mobile Communications
Sun Yat-sen University
University of Science and Technology Beijing

2017 Heterogeneous Architecture Standards and Artificial Intelligence Conference

The first CRC Symposium is part of the 2017 Heterogeneous System Architecture Standards and Artificial Intelligence Conference, which will be held in Xiamen on May 25 – 26. The two-day event is co-hosted by CESI, the HSA Foundation and Chinese Association of Artificial Intelligence, with an organizing committee including Huaxia General Processor Technologies, the HSA Foundation CRC, and Xiamen Integrated Circuit Industry Association.

Renowned scholars and officials from related industry organizations will be invited to exchange and discuss standards and technologies for heterogeneous computing and artificial intelligence. A list of outstanding industry leaders will speak at the AI conference, joined by numerous other attending companies from related fields. For more conference information, a list of speakers and online registration, please visit www.hsa-china.com.

HSA is rapidly becoming a mainstream platform to support the promotion and application of the artificial intelligence industry and to develop standards for the next generation of SoCs and heterogeneous processors. The Symposium will bring together dozens of universities, institutes and companies to discuss the HSA Foundation and its development in China. Topics will include standards, key technologies, collaborative development, and software ecosystem construction, among others.

The CRC will also take an active role in developing the second annual Heterogeneous System Architecture 2017 Global Summit (visit www.hsafoundation.com; details to be posted soon). The two-day 2016 event was co-sponsored by the HSA Foundation and the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA), and was also supported by the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone (E-Town), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China (MIIT), and Cyberspace Administration of China.

Supporting Quotes

China Electronics Standardization Institute

"Heterogeneous computing is the key technology in the next-generation processor design. China Electronic Standardization Institute (CESI), as the primary non-profit and comprehensive research institution for China's standardization of electronic information technologies, is very pleased to be a member of the CRC, and together with other CRC members, will drive heterogeneous computing standardization work in China. As a member of the HSA Foundation, we look forward to joining global colleagues to improve the HSA technical standardization and better promote the development of next generation processors worldwide including China."

Baoyou Wang, Director of Basic Product Research Center, China Electronics Standardization Institute

Nanjing University

"The School of Microelectronics at Nanjing University focuses on a variety of core disciplines, some of which include multi-core processing chip architectures and implementations, reconfigurable computing, three-dimensional network-on-chip (NoC) design, SoC design and high-performance VLSI implementations in digital signal processing algorithms. Heterogeneous computing is one of today's hottest technologies and encompasses important applications such as mobile devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. We look forward to working with the HSA Foundation in effectively using CPU, GPU, DSP, FPGA and other hardware and software resources to support research and development of heterogeneous system architectures. We thank the HSA Foundation for facilitating a dedicated research platform for institutions and universities."

Hongbing Pan, Professor, Nanjing University

Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences

"The institute's main research directions include wireless sensor and communication technology, and industrial digital control systems. Our research group is engaged in R&D of industrial bus technology related to communications chips, and system-on-chip with communication functions. We look forward to working with HSA Foundation's CRC where we will focus on the research of heterogeneous multi-core technology for industrial control SoC's. With the development of China's "Industry 4.0", the traditional centralized control is transitioning to a decentralized model. Industrial control systems are composed of heterogeneous cores including micro controllers and DSPs connected by a common bus. HSAF technologies address these types of systems providing flexibility, high performance, integration, and miniaturization. We look forward to adopting HSAF technology and evaluating the effectiveness of HSA for industrial control systems."

Chuang Xie, Senior Engineer and Director of SoC Designs, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Southeast University

"The establishment of HSA Foundation's CRC will further promote the rapid development of heterogeneous computing technology in the region. Southeast University has made several innovations in deep learning and cloud computing. Its Laboratory of Image Science and Technology, one of the earliest units in China to be involved in image processing, looks forward to contributing innovative technology solutions. This will enable researchers to focus on algorithm research and evaluate their effectiveness in HSA systems."

Aodong Shen, Assistant Professor, Southeast University

Sun Yat-sen University

"Processors are facing great challenges. Moore's Law is slowing down, while new applications such as big data and artificial intelligence require higher computation and storage capability. Heterogeneous computing is proposed as "CPU+" architecture. It can significantly improve the system performance and energy efficiency for a wide range of application domains, and is evolving to become the main platform for the next generation computation industry. The HSA Foundation aims to standardize the heterogeneous computing architecture. It's my honor to participate in HSA Foundation's CRC. We look forward to providing input to the HSA Foundation with regional requirements and application results that will help develop the next generation standard for HSA, and push forward the research, development, and industrialization of heterogeneous computing in China."

Zhiyi Yu, Professor, Sun Yat-sen University

AMD

"We are glad to see the HSA Foundation is expanding, and we will continue to take active role to participate in heterogeneous computing activities and its open source efforts via the ROCm platform that bring HSA-enabled drivers, runtimes, compiler and tools to the global developer community. We hope together with the new members to promote more academic research in the China region."

Paul Blinzer, AMD Fellow

Huaxia General Processor Technologies

"As a HSA Foundation member, it is exciting to see that universities, institutes and companies in China are joining the CRC and making it a growing platform for heterogeneous computing in the region. Huaxia GPT focuses on designing and licensing embedded HSA-compatible processors and optimizing them to enable quicker, easier programming of high-performance parallel computing devices in heterogeneous ecosystems. We look forward to the future collaboration with these newly joined forces on the cutting-edge applications in the field of machine vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-to-Machine (M2M), edge computing and deep learning."

Kerry Li, CEO, Huaxia General Processor Technologies

Imagination Technologies

"As a founding member of the HSA Foundation, Imagination works closely with other members to create specifications that make it easier to develop and program heterogeneous SoCs, and we are also developing IP cores enabling the realization of such SoCs. The role of China in designing next-generation semiconductors cannot be underestimated, and the HSA Foundation's CRC can play a key role increasing awareness within the industry of the challenges and solutions around heterogeneous computing."

James Liu, VP and GM China, Imagination Technologies

About the HSA Foundation

The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a non-profit consortium of SoC IP vendors, OEMs, Academia, SoC vendors, OSVs and ISVs, whose goal is making programming for parallel computing easy and pervasive. HSA members are building a heterogeneous computing ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, which combines scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU, while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance with low power consumption. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation using CPU, GPU and other programmable and fixed function devices, while supporting a diverse set of high-level programming languages, and creating the foundation for next-generation, general-purpose computing.

Follow the HSA Foundation on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Return to: 2017 News Releases