System-Level Power Modeling Takes Root


Power, heat, and their combined effects on aging and reliability, are becoming increasingly critical variables in the design of chips that will be used across a variety of new and existing markets. As more processing moves to edge, where sensors are generating a tsunami of data, there are a number of factors that need to be considered in designs. On one side, power budgets need to reflect th... » read more

Does Power Verification Work?


Functional verification continues to evolve, but power verification—a somewhat new concern—remains at levels of sophistication reminiscent of functional verification 30 years ago. When will power verification catch up and what must to happen to make it possible? These are questions that the industry is still grappling with, and not everyone believes they require answers. Functional error... » read more

Designing 5G Chips


5G is the wireless technology of the future, and it’s coming fast. The technology boasts very high-speed data transfer rates, much lower latency than 4G LTE, and the ability to handle significantly higher densities of devices per cell site. In short, it is the best technology for the massive amount of data that will be generated by sensors in cars, IoT devices, and a growing list of next-g... » read more

What Happened To UPF?


Two years ago there was a lot of excitement, both within the industry and the standards communities, about rapid advancements that were being made around low-power design, languages and methodologies. Since then, everything has gone quiet. What happened? At the time, it was reported that the [gettech id="31043" comment="IEEE 1801"] committee was the largest active committee within the IEEE. ... » read more

Processing Moves To The Edge


Edge computing is evolving from a relatively obscure concept into an increasingly complex component of a distributed computing architecture, in which processing is being shifted toward end devices and satellite data facilities and away from the cloud. Edge computing has gained attention in two main areas. One is the [getkc id="78" kc_name="industrial IoT"], where it serves as a do-it-yoursel... » read more

High-Performance Memory Challenges


Designing memories for high-performance applications is becoming far more complex at 7/5nm. There are more factors to consider, more bottlenecks to contend with, and more tradeoffs required to solve them. One of the biggest challenges is the sheer volume of data that needs to be processed for AI, machine learning or deep learning, or even in classic data center server racks. “The design... » read more

Get Ready For Integrated Silicon Photonics


Long-haul communications and data centers are huge buyers of photonics components, and that is leading to rapid advances in the technology and opening new markets and opportunities. The industry has to adapt to meet the demands being placed on it and solve the bottlenecks in the design, development and fabrication of integrated silicon photonics. "Look at the networking bandwidth used across... » read more

Mesh Networking Grows For ICs


Mesh networks were invented to create rich interaction among groups of almost-unrelated peers, but now they are showing up in everything from advanced chip packages to IoT networks. The flexibility of a many-to-many peer-connection model made the mesh approach a favorite for two-dimensional network-on-a-chip topologies, to the point where they began to supplant data-bus connections during th... » read more

How To Choose The Right Memory


When it comes to designing memory, there is no such thing as one size fits all. And given the long list of memory types and usage scenarios, system architects must be absolutely clear on the system requirements for their application. A first decision is whether or not to put the memory on the logic die as part of the SoC, or keep it as off-chip memory. "The tradeoff between latency and th... » 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

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