Author's Latest Posts


The Data Center Journey, From Central Utility To Center Of The Universe


High-performance computing (HPC) has taken on many meanings over the years. The primary goal of HPC is to provide the needed computational power to run a data center – a utilitarian facility dedicated to storing, processing, and distributing data. The beginning of HPC Historically, the data being processed was the output of business operations for a given organization. Transactions, custome... » read more

Long And Longer Reach SerDes – On The Road Again


We’ve had the pleasure of participating in two events over the past two weeks. I wouldn’t recommend doing two major shows back-to-back, but it has been exhilarating and quite interesting. Our “road trip” began last week in Mountain View for the second annual AI Hardware Summit. You’ve probably noticed you can go to an AI-related show every week (or more) if you like. The trick is to f... » read more

Memory IP: From Cobblestone To Cornerstone


Embedded, on-chip SRAM has been a fundamental building block for custom and standard chips for quite a while. When all this began, there were typically small SRAM blocks of on-chip memory supplemented by off-chip DRAM devices. Those off-chip devices became more sophisticated, with higher performance interfaces (e.g., GDDR6) or new form factors (e.g., HBM2 3D memory stacks). The on-chip memory p... » read more

Google Cloud—A View From The Top


I recently had the opportunity to attend a retreat-style event in Napa Valley hosted by the Google Cloud team. Like many such events I’ve attended over the years, the guests were treated to excellent accommodations, fabulous food, a good amount of free time for networking or to partake in activities, relevant and on-point presentations and world-class wine (this is Napa Valley after all). All... » read more

Delivering High-Speed Communications: The Back Story


Back in January, I posted a blog about what it takes to deliver high-speed communication. In that post, I talked about a new test board for our high-speed 7nm 56G PAM4 & NRZ DSP-based long-reach SerDes. We collaborated with several companies to build a high-precision board that could be used to test our SerDes in a system context. At that time, we were just finishing the opening act for thi... » read more

High-Speed Communications: On The Road Again


Lately, we’ve had quite a lot of trade show participation. I discussed ISSCC last month. I will be careful right now to state that ISSCC is a technical conference and not a trade show. The organizers are quite particular about that. Nonetheless, we were invited to demonstrate our high-speed SerDes there, and we got a lot of great questions from a lot of very smart people. Since ISSCC, we�... » read more

A Conference For The Ages


The International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) was held recently in its permanent location at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. eSilicon had the honor of both presenting our SerDes capabilities and demonstrating the technology as well. More about that later. First, I’d like to examine the institution called ISSCC. The first ISSCC was held in 1954 in Philadelphia. Yes, 1954, that�... » read more

High-Speed Communication Takes A Village


Supply chain, partner network, ecosystem. There are a lot of ways to describe the collection of companies needed to get something done. We’ve all discussed the extensive ecosystem needed to get an advanced chip designed and built. Without a doubt, that is a formidable problem addressed by a sophisticated team of companies. I’d like to take it up a notch in this discussion, however. What abo... » read more

Supercomputers Are For Everyone


Our SerDes world tour continues. This past month, we demonstrated our 7nm 56G long-reach SerDes in Dallas and Israel. In Dallas, our demonstration included error-free operation in 56G PAM4 over a 30dB channel without forward error correction through an eye-popping five-meter cable. Many thanks to our partner Samtec for providing that cable, allowing backplane designers to now “reach beyond th... » read more

High-Speed Serial Comms: Getting There Is Half The Fun


Last month I wrote about our 56G SerDes announcement – silicon validated and running in Rome at a major show. We had a great time at that show and got a lot of compliments about the quality and flexibility of our SerDes. These kinds of unfiltered, unsolicited customer comments are really what makes it all worthwhile. It was a gratifying and exciting time. This month, we’re at it again. O... » read more

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