Author's Latest Posts


Transaction Debug


SoC design is complex. It involves both software and hardware design that calls for a higher level of abstraction to ensure accurate verification. Transaction-level verification and debug offers this higher abstraction, while staying close to actual hardware signals. Traditionally, its use has been limited by the lack of a better mechanism and database to capture the critical information needed... » read more

Leveraging Processor Extensibility To Build An Ultra Low-Power Embedded Subsystem


There is increasing demand for electronic devices to execute more functions while consuming less power and silicon area. To achieve this, systems instantiating multiple, heterogeneous processor cores optimized for low power and high performance are gaining popularity among design teams. In these systems, one or more deeply embedded processors execute a limited set of dedicated applications. The... » read more

More Effective Test: Slack-Based Transition Delay


Semiconductor companies have come to rely on delay testing to attain high defect coverage of manufactured digital integrated circuits (ICs). Delay testing uses transition delay (TD) patterns created by automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) tools to target subtle manufacturing defects in fabricated designs. Although standard TD testing improves defect coverage beyond levels stuck-at patterns ... » read more

Ultra Low-Power 9D Sensor Fusion Implementation


This paper presents a case study on computing the 3D orientation of a device by means of a 9D fusion algorithm. The focus is on optimizing the fusion algorithm for execution on the DesignWare Sensor IP Subsystem. Performance measurements show the benefits of using ARC Processor EXtension (APEX) accelerators, which improve both cycle count and energy consumption in comparison to other commercial... » read more

Using VDKs For Automotive Systems Development


The software content of automotive systems found in powertrain, chassis, safety, body and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) application is increasing. At the same time, the pressure to accelerate development time lines, improve reliability and maintain/reduce costs is also increasing. Automotive OEM, Tier 1 and semiconductor companies involved in embedded software development, integrati... » read more

Building An Efficient, Tightly-Coupled Embedded System Using An Extensible Processor


The increasing demand for better filtering and processing capabilities of the processor within embedded systems results in a trend to shift from 8-bit microcontroller tightly coupled embedded systems towards 32-bit processor bus-based embedded systems. As a consequence, the power, performance and area (PPA) ratio of these systems also shifts in favor of performance at the cost of power and area... » read more

Using Virtual Prototypes To Address The Growing Software Complexity In Automotive


The software content is growing steadily across multiple applications and the automotive market is no exception to this. In fact the amount of electronics and software in cars is transforming the way we perceive the value of a car. With this steady increase in software also comes the need to handle the amount and the complexity of all these different software stacks. And unlike other applicatio... » read more

MacBook Air 2013: Power Efficient To The Core(s)


By Cary Chin Last month, we looked at the initial announcement at WWDC of the latest MacBook Air laptops. These new machines are physically nearly identical to their predecessors, boast negligible performance improvements (and even performance degradation in some instances), cost about the same, and yet in my view are perhaps the most revolutionary products since the MacBook Air line was reinv... » read more

Apple’s Big Breakthrough


By Cary Chin For literally years now, we’ve talked about and measured energy consumption as smartphones have morphed from primarily communications devices (voice), to the world’s most widespread computing platform, and back again to a communications focus. But this time it’s data communications, and voice calls are just a small subset. Smartphones themselves, once the defining standar... » read more

Does My Phone Dream?


By Cary Chin Starting with my commentary on the Tesla Model S last month (poor standby time before software update), I was thinking about how common a problem standby power is these days. Nearly all of our recently introduced smartphones have had similar problems (iPhone 5, Nexus 4, Galaxy S4, Lumia 900) running on virtually all operating systems (iOS 6.x, Android 4.2.x, Windows Phone 8). All ... » read more

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