Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Security Kyocera is using Rambus’ RT-130 Root of Trust and AES-IP-38 AES Accelerator IP for data security on Kyocera Evolution Series MFPs (multi-function printers). Connected printers are notorious targets for malicious actors to gain access a network or data. The Evolution Series MFPs’ data security mets Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 Cryptographic Module Validatio... » read more

Bug Hunt! Spiraling In On Formal Coverage Closure


By Mark Eslinger and Jin Hou Many companies have used formal verification to verify complex SoCs and safety-critical designs. Using formal verification to confirm design functionalities and to uncover functional bugs is emerging as an efficient verification approach. Although formal verification will not handle the complexity of a design at the SoC level, it is an efficient tool to verify th... » read more

A Minimal RISC-V


Microcontrollers exist in almost everything, but can RISC-V satisfy the needs of this market? Is it small enough to replace 8-bit processors? What might help people migrate to a more modern processor architecture? RISC-V defines a 32-bit processor instruction set architecture (ISA) that is open source and free to be implemented in any number of ways. It is touted for being a very small and e... » read more

The Ethernet Standard: To IP And Beyond


Ethernet is ubiquitous—it is the core technology that defines the Internet and serves to connect the world in ways that people could not imagine even one generation ago. HPC clusters are working on solving the most challenging problems facing humanity—and cloud computing is the service hosting many of the application workloads struggling with these questions. While alternative network infra... » read more

Where Do The Chips Fall In The Energy Transformation?


The energy industry is in the first stages of a once-in-a-century transformation. And one of the most important aspects of this shift is that EVs, solar farms grid equipment, and appliances will inherently rely more on digital technologies. As Hamed Heyhat, General Manager of Grid Automation at General Electric, says, “Decarbonization cannot happen without digitization of the grid.” So h... » read more

SOT-MRAM To Challenge SRAM


In an era of new non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies, yet another variation is poised to join the competition — a new version of MRAM called spin-orbit torque, or SOT-MRAM. What makes this one particularly interesting is the possibility that someday it could supplant SRAM arrays in systems-on-chip (SoCs) and other integrated circuits. The key advantages of SOT-MRAM technology are the pr... » read more

Advancing Signaling Rates To 64 GT/s With PCI Express 6.0


From the introduction of PCI Express 3.0 (PCIe 3.0) in 2010 onward, each new generation of the standard has offered double the signaling rate of its predecessor. PCIe 3.0 saw a significant change to the protocol with the move from 8b/10b to highly efficient 128b/130b encoding. The PCIe 6.0 specification, now officially released, doubles the signaling rate to 64 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) a... » read more

Is Programmable Overhead Worth The Cost?


Programmability has fueled the growth of most semiconductor products, but how much does it actually cost? And is that cost worth it? The answer is more complicated than a simple efficiency formula. It can vary by application, by maturity of technology in a particular market, and in the context of much larger systems. What's considered important for one design may be very different for anothe... » read more

SuperGrid Institute Responds to Energy and Climate Demands


Researchers and developers at SuperGrid Institute use Ansys electronics software solutions to perform studies on power converters, critical links in the chain between electric generators and consumers, for their clients. Fig. 1: Medium-voltage DC grid power supply topology. As an independent research and innovation institute based in France, SuperGrid Institute is dedicated to developin... » read more

CES 2022: In Person But Not Many People


CES was and is officially hybrid, with some events on-site in Las Vegas and some online. But many of the large exhibitors pulled out of attending in person (including Cadence, although we might be a big exhibitor at DAC but at CES we are tiny). A lot of the press seems to have stayed away in-person too. To be honest, a lot of the press has been gradually staying away for years since so much is ... » read more

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