Locking When Emulating Xtensa LX Multi-Core On A Xilinx FPGA


Today's high-performance computing systems often require the designer to instantiate multiple CPU or DSP cores in their subsystem. However, the performance gained by using multiple CPUs comes with additional programming complexity, especially when accessing shared memory data structures and hardware peripherals. CPU cores need to access shared data in an atomic fashion in a multi-core environme... » read more

Mastering Cyber Awareness: Training For The Digital Battlefield


In today’s digital battlefield, cyber awareness is crucial for warfighters. To effectively prepare them, it’s essential to create realistic and detailed models of mobile networks, encompassing both physical and virtual infrastructure. This is where network modeling software comes into play, offering a high-fidelity approach to enhance cyber situational awareness. A high-fidelity modeling an... » read more

UMI: Extending Chiplet Interconnect Standards To Deal With The Memory Wall


With the Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit upon us, it’s an appropriate time to talk about chiplet interconnect (in fact the 2024 OCP Summit has a whole day dedicated to the multi-die topic, on October 17). Of particular interest is the Bunch of Wires (BoW) interconnect specification that continues to evolve. At OCP there will be an update and working group looking at version 2.1 of BoW. (... » read more

Corner-Case Bug Hunting for RISC-V


By Ashish Darbari and Ia Tsomaia RISC-V continues to make headlines worldwide, but verification continues to be challenging. The findings of the Wilson Research Report, 2022 (see figure 1) make the trends in verification clear. We presented these in a keynote talk titled, "Future is Formal," at the recent DVCon India event. One thing is quite apparent: whether you are using directed tests... » read more

Accelerating Reset Domain Crossing Verification With Data Analytics Techniques


By Reetika and Sulabh Kumar Khare As the complexity of integrated circuit (IC) designs continues to rise, the task of verifying these designs has become increasingly challenging. The pace of this growth is staggering, with design complexity doubling roughly every 20 months. This exponential increase places immense pressure on verification processes, which must keep up to ensure that these so... » read more

PAM4: Pulse Amplitude Modulation Explained


Pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) is already a widely adopted technology in high-speed digital communications. But to understand why it has become ubiquitous in serial data standards, you first must understand the market forces driving the data networking industry. In this article, I will explore PAM4 in-depth, from its benefits and potential tradeoffs to why it was an essential innovation that ... » read more

Enabling Innovative Multi-Vendor Chiplet-Based Designs


Chiplets have emerged as a critical implementation paradigm for semiconductor products, primarily because they can deliver cost benefits relative to a non-chiplet-based approach. The first, most well-proven, and obvious benefit of a chiplet-based approach is manufacturing cost. Manufacturing cost benefits are accrued either from the appropriate selection of chiplet die size, or by optimizin... » read more

Managing Performance in Modern SoC Designs


As industries like automotive, consumer electronics, telecommunications and artificial intelligence (AI) push for greater processing power, efficiency and scalability, system-on-chip (SoC) designs have rapidly evolved to meet these demands. With the growing complexity of modern SoCs, designers face the challenge of managing an increasing number of interconnected IP blocks while ensuring seamles... » read more

DDR5 UDIMM Evolution To Clock Buffered DIMMs (CUDIMM)


DDR5 is the latest generation of PCDDR memory that is used in a wide range of application like data centers, Laptops and personal computers, autonomous driving systems, servers, cloud computing, and gaming are now increasingly being used for AI applications with advances in memory bandwidth and density to allow DDR5 DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Modules) to support densities higher then 256 GB per ... » read more

Simultaneous Bi-Directional Signaling: A Breakthrough Alternative For Multi-Die Assemblies


In designing multi-die systems-in-package, with or without chiplets, it is easy to think of the interconnect between dies as simply analogous to the interconnect between functional blocks on a single die. But this analogy can lead architects and designers into a blind alley from which it becomes impossible to meet system performance and power requirements. The reason lies in fundamental differe... » read more

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