category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

More Choices But Less Design Freedom
By Ed Sperling - 19 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling “What if” is an indelible part of the lexicon of every SoC architect and design engineer from the front end of the design flow all the way to manufacturing, but while the terminology will persist for years to come the answers and the value of those answers are starting to change. Complexity, cost and the need for better integration have simultaneously increased the numb... » read more

Methodology Shifts Ahead
By Pallab Chatterjee - 19 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Pallab Chatterjee The high cost of SoC development at advanced process nodes is forcing a significant shift in many of the methodologies used in design. Hierarchical design methods are giving way to IP integration and hierarchical analysis at the architectural and functional design levels. Previously, large blocks were implemented at the top level of the chip and the analysis was pushe... » read more

Return Of The Femtocell
By Cheryl Ajluni - 19 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Cheryl Ajluni Nothing has been left unscathed in the current global economic downturn, and that includes femtocell deployments. It was just last year that femtocells were being proclaimed a 2009 “killer app,” along with LTE and WiMAX. But what was once viewed as the next great thing has instead faced a tough road with more than a few large-scale deployments by major mobile operators be... » read more

A Noticeably Cooler Continental Climate
By Ed Sperling - 12 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

Nicolas Leterrier, chief representative of the Minalogic coordination unit, whose job is to oversee the “innovation cluster” in Grenoble, France, sat down with Low-Power Engineering to discuss the changes under way in Europe, what's driving it and where researchers in Grenoble see the future challenges. What follows are excerpts of that interview. By Ed Sperling LPE: Is the impetus fo... » read more

Meeting The Challenge Of Verification In Low-Power Designs
By Ed Sperling - 12 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Cheryl Ajluni Over the years, new techniques, technologies and design tools have been brought to market with the explicit intent of simplifying design verification. Despite these efforts verification still manages to consume a huge chunk of the time spent during design. By some accounts that number tops 70%. The problem is that verification is hard, and it certainly doesn’t get an easi... » read more

Hypervisors For Managing Power
By Ed Sperling - 12 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Hypervisors are headed for a new role inside of multicore chips—managing the various power islands in addition to the cores. A patent application filed by IBM, entitled “Method and syarstem for hypervisor based power management,” shows the company’s intention to use hypervisors for everything from monitoring power consumption rates to scaling power for individual core... » read more

Power Trip Advisor
By Ed Sperling - 12 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Geoffrey James There’s never been a greater demand for power-efficient silicon. As consumer electronic devices get smaller, with increased functionality, battery power becomes a premium resource. At the same time, “Green IT” is a major corporate trend, and the best way to be environmentally sensitive (while saving on energy costs) is to buy technology that ekes the maximum computing o... » read more

Power Delivery Issues
By Ed Sperling - 10 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Reducing the voltage in a system on chip is like turning down the water pressure on a home plumbing system. Pretty soon you find out that not all the faucets work properly because there isn’t enough pressure behind them. While it’s vital to drop the voltage to boost battery life in mobile devices, not to mention reduce the overall power consumption in plug-in devices, t... » read more

The FPGA Alternative
By Various Writers - 31 Oct, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Geoffrey James Until a few years ago, SoC designers focused almost exclusively on ASICs. While it was theoretically possible to create an SoC design for an FPGA, the programmable chips were too bulky and pricey to be useful for much more than prototyping. Today, however, designers are increasingly turning to FPGAs for their SOC targets for production systems. Why the sudden upsurge in So... » read more

Outsourcing’s New Face
By Ed Sperling - 29 Oct, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling As the semiconductor industry digs out from one of the worst downturns in decades, the business of semiconductor design and engineering is changing. While the architecture and features are still being developed by chip companies, the actual work of developing the chip increasingly is being done by third parties. Outsourcing is hardly new concept in business. In the early pa... » read more

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