Solving ‘Simulator Sickness’ With Smart Software, SoC Design


The growth in virtual and augmented reality headsets is expected to explode in the coming years. The U.K.-based research firm KZero estimates headset unit volume will jump from nearly 4 million this year to 38.4 million in 2018. But that growth rate might be stunted if users continue to struggle with “simulator sickness,” that queasy feeling that something is just not right as they navi... » read more

Smaller, Faster, Cheaper


Sometimes the most intriguing market growth comes in “unsexy” applications. Take the mobile market for example. Overall growth rates are cooling, as you’d expect with a maturing market. But in 2020, 1 billion smart phones are expected to ship in the entry-level category. This implies an 8% compounded annual growth rate, making entry mobile the most rapidly expanding mobile market segme... » read more

Think In Blocks


It always seems to come back to LEGOs, doesn’t it? Earlier this year I wrote about Google Project Ara, the so-called “LEGO” smart phone architecture unveiled in April. Project Ara uses the MIPI Alliance UniPro and M-PHY protocols as the backbone for a modular electronics architecture inside a smart phone “endoskeleton.” Using electro-permanent magnets (they don’t need a perma... » read more

Thermal And Power Considerations In Designing For The Developing World


Engineers designing for emerging markets confront fascinating challenges. Take data centers for developing societies. Most of these systems are in remote locations, exposed to the elements, with limited power, save for the sun. How do you deal with rain, rust, durability? How do you prevent members of the animal kingdom sauntering by and chewing on your system? These are some of the intri... » read more

Think IoT Designs Are Challenging? Try Embedded Systems In The Brain


There’s low power and then there’s low power. There are amazing applications and then there are amazing applications. Today the bleeding edge of low power design is not so much in IoT (although excellent work is being done in that space) but in medical, where the stakes are high and possible outcomes life-altering. Chet Moritz, associate professor with the University of Washington’s... » read more

A Broad, Effective Approach to Optimizing for Power


As an industry we talk a lot about the challenges of power-aware design and accompanying issues at leading-edge nodes. There’s no denying some tough challenges, but if we’re honest, there are plenty of opportunities we can exploit right now to improve power in our designs. You’ve heard the saying, “death by a thousand cuts?” Well, when it comes to grappling with power in today’s ... » read more

Not All Workloads Are Equal


ARM's Ben and Otilia put a human face big on processing — who sleeps, who works, when they do each, and and what's behind their decision. Check out the video: [youtube vid=J2z7P9JKukc] big.LITTLE uses a heterogeneous multi-core approach to power optimization, where high-performance CPU cores are combined with the most efficient CPU cores to deliver peak-performance capacity, higher s... » read more

Changes In The Cloud


I wrapped up an exciting week last Friday at the inaugural NFV World Congress at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose last week, where more than 1,000 stakeholders had gathered to convey, debate, discuss and learn about the vision for the next-generation cloud and networking infrastructure. One of the highlights of the week was the OPNFV mini-summit to communicate the tremendous progress that t... » read more

What Is Coherency?


Coherency is about ensuring all processors, or bus masters in the system see the same view of memory. Cache coherency means that all components have the same view of shared data. Just as you need both of your eyes to have the same view in order to see properly, it’s critical for every IP block that has access to a shared data source to view consistent data. For example, if I have a process... » read more

Building A Better Customized Debug And Trace Solution For Multi-Core SoCs


If you think of debug as solving a murder case through the use of backward reasoning, then trace is the video surveillance that helps pinpoint the culprit. Trace is invaluable as it provides real-time visibility into errors, and dramatically cuts down on design cycles and iterations. A recent study done by Cambridge University found that the global cost of software debugging has risen to the... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →