Formally Verifying SystemC/C++ Designs


We’re seeing an increase in the number of designs employing SystemC/C++. This isn’t surprising given the fact that specific use models have emerged to drive common design flows across engineering teams leading to the adoption of high-level synthesis (HLS) at many large semiconductor and electronic systems companies. These HLS tools are a popular method to rapidly generate design components ... » read more

Accelerating 5G Baseband With Adaptive SoCs


5G new radio (NR) network specifications demand new architectures for radio and access networks. While the 5G NR architecture includes new spectrum and massive MIMO (mMIMO) antennas, corresponding access networks architecture must also evolve to implement the services defined by 5G, which include enhanced Mobile Broadband, Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications and massive Machine Type Commu... » read more

No Safety Without Dependable Security In Automotive Designs


The cyber threat faced by the automotive industry reached public awareness in 2015, when a “White Hat” research team commandeered the control electronics of a target vehicle at freeway speeds. Subsequently published details of the team’s work identified several discrete weak links that were leveraged by the researchers to create the attack. The approach illustrated a concept well-known to... » read more

Securing Server Systems And Data At The Hardware Level


Across the global internet, there’s a growing need to secure data, not only coursing over the network, but within the servers in data centers and deployed at the edge. Interconnect technologies such as Compute Express Link (CXL) will enable future servers to be disaggregated into composable resources that can be finely matched to the requirements of varied workloads and support virtualized co... » read more

IP-XACT Is Back, For All The Right Reasons


The intent behind IP-XACT has always been to provide a bridge between system-on-chip (SoC) assembly and larger considerations. This standard has additionally been used to adapt to multi-sourced and constantly evolving intellectual property (IP) that design and product teams build, often in different companies. Moreover, it was used to interface with product development beyond the specialized ne... » read more

Challenges Of Edge AI Inference


Bringing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to your industry—whether it be medical imaging, robotics, or some other vision application entirely—has the potential to enable new functionalities and reduce the compute requirements for existing workloads. This is because a single CNN can replace more computationally expensive image processing, denoising, and object detection algorithms. Howev... » read more

‘Hug The Debug’ – Before It’s Too Late


Though the term “shift-left” originated in the software industry, its importance is often cited in the hardware (semiconductor) industry where the end-product (chip) costs are skyrocketing. The increase in cost is driven by a global chip shortage, especially in the automotive industry. Manufacturing a robust chip is a long, iterative process that may require many re-spins. Shift-left refers... » read more

Making Autonomous Driver Chips Safe From The Top Down


It’s easy to think of electronics applications in which the chips must be ultra-safe: nuclear power plants, aircraft, weapons systems, and implanted medical devices. Autonomous vehicles, capable of self-driving with only the electronics in control, are rapidly emerging to join this list. These vehicles must be “safe” in all the usual colloquial ways, but they also must meet a very specifi... » read more

Securing Offload Engines For A Robust Secure SoC System


Welcome to the Securing Offload Engines blog series where we will explore different approaches to security implementations and look at system examples involving Cadence Tensilica Xtensa Processors. In this blog, we will look at why it is important to build a robust secure SoC and introduce some of the common approaches to securing the offload engines. In subsequent posts, we will look at each o... » read more

Staying A Step Ahead Of Hackers With Continuous Verification


We’re all familiar with the apps on our phones and how often they get updated. Most of the time, these updates are done over the air quickly and easily. Other times, a completely new download of the software is required. But let’s take a look at the hardware platforms that the software runs on. What happens when the hardware needs to be upgraded? Today’s hardware platforms are expensive t... » read more

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