The Analog Design Gap


By Benjamin Prautsch and Torsten Reich Sensors are everywhere. In the context of Industry 4.0 and IoT, we face an ever-increasing demand for high-quality sensing. Data acquisition is fundamental to adaptive production chains. So aggregating data isn't just some nice-to-have feature. It is the basis of modern production systems. But don’t we have sensors already? Isn’t everything fine?... » read more

Why All Nodes Won’t Work


A flood of new nodes, half-nodes and every number in between is creating confusion among chipmakers. While most say it's good to have choices, it's not clear which or how many of those choices are actually good. At issue is which [getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"] will be available for those nodes, how that IP will differ from other nodes in terms of power, performance, area and sensitivity to a v... » read more

How AI Impacts Memory Systems


Throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s computer systems were bottlenecked by relatively slow CPU performance, thereby limiting what applications could do. Driven by Moore’s Law, transistor counts increased significantly over the years, improving system performance and enabling exciting new computing possibilities. Although computing capabilities have advanced significantly in recen... » read more

IP And Power


[getkc id="108" kc_name="Power"] is quickly becoming a major differentiator for products, regardless of whether they are connected to a wall outlet or dependent on a battery. At the same time, increasing amounts of a chips content comes from third-party [getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"]. So how do system designers ensure that the complete system has an optimal power profile, and what can they do to ... » read more

Energy Requirements And Challenges For IoT Autonomous Intelligence At The Edge


Recently, on a cold February night at San Jose State University, I attended the fourth episode of the talk series IR4: The Cognitive Era. IR4 talks focus on the fourth Industrial Revolution that is currently taking place and how cognitive science affects education, careers, and life. This latest part involved four esteemed experts on cloud and edge computing and the ramifications of energy effi... » read more

By the Power Vested in Me, I Now Pronounce You (The SoC Designer)…


…Doomed. Well, maybe that’s a little harsh, but your job won’t be getting any easier; that “happily ever after” may be harder to achieve than you think, and there are a number of reasons why. And by “me” (of vested power), here I’m really talking about the power of the consumer market as a whole and our collective insatiable demand for newer, shinier…well, just plain “coo... » read more

Intelligence At The Edge Is Transforming Our World


Innovation comes in all forms in technology, from software and hardware to displays all the way to the human-machine interface. As devices and systems become more intelligent, the onus on humans to learn the machine’s ways is shifting. Until now, interaction with smart devices has largely relied on our ability to manipulate the machines; to learn their language to input and extract the inform... » read more

New Issues In Advanced Packaging


Advanced packaging is gaining in popularity as the cost and complexity of integrating everything onto a planar SoC becomes more difficult and costly at each new node, but ensuring that these packaged die function properly and yield sufficiently isn't so simple. There are a number of factors that are tilting more of the the semiconductor industry toward advanced [getkc id="27" kc_name="packag... » read more

Heterogeneous Hubbub


It’s no secret that designers today would prefer not to be restricted in their architectural choices. And who can blame them? At the same time, this sentiment has boosted interest and usage of both heterogenous architectures as well as the RISC-V ISA. To support this, companies across the design, test and verification ecosystem are ramping efforts. One such effort is the teaming of UltraSo... » read more

Mobile Machine Learning At Arm


Machine learning is playing an increasingly significant role in emerging mobile application domains such as AR/VR, ADAS, etc. Accordingly, hardware architects have designed customized hardware for machine learning algorithms, especially neural networks, to improve compute efficiency. However, machine learning is typically just one processing stage in complex end-to-end applications, which invol... » read more

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