The Problem With Benchmarks


Benchmarks long have been used to compare products, but what makes a good benchmark and who should be trusted with their creation? The answer to those questions is more difficult than it may appear on the surface, and some benchmarks are being used in surprising ways. Everyone loves a simple, clear benchmark, but that is only possible when the selection criteria are equally simple. Unfortuna... » read more

Servers Are Becoming More Heterogeneous


The number of CPUs in a server is growing, and so is the number of vendors that make those processors. CPU server build has been one, two, four, and occasionally more x86 processors, with IBM’s Power and Z series as the major exception. While x86 processors aren't necessarily being replaced, they are being complimented and augmented with new processor designs for a variety of more speciali... » read more

Powering The Edge: Driving Optimal Performance With Ethos-N77 Processor


Repurposing a CPU, GPU, or DSP is an easy way to add ML capabilities to an edge device. However, where responsiveness or power efficiency is critical, a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) may be the best solution. In this paper, we describe how the Arm Ethos-N77 NPU delivers optimal performance. Click here to read more. » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 10


Cadence's Paul McLellan finds out some of the pressing technological challenges and opportunities at the recent SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium, from the purity of gases and other materials used in semiconductor manufacturing to increasing cost and time-to-market pressures. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster examines trends in low power ASIC and IC design, including active management of power and t... » read more

DRAM’s Persistent Threat To Chip Security


A well-known DRAM vulnerability called "rowhammer," which allows an assailant to disrupt or take control of a system, continues to haunt the chip industry. Solutions have been tried, and new ones are being proposed, but the potential for a major attack persists. First discovered some five years ago, most of the efforts to eliminate the "rowhammer" threat have done little more than mitigate t... » read more

Security In The ARM Ecosystem


Building security in an SoC aiming to meet the goals set by the ARM Platform Security Architecture (PSA) is a complex matter. This is compounded by the complexity of modern-day SoCs comprising multiple processors, security domains and security levels. The Rambus root of trust provides a solid foundation for the SoC security architecture ticking ‘all the boxes’ for reaching the security goal... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 3


Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in on the outlook from SEMI's recent Industry Strategy Symposium, which looked at the prospects for global recovery, the application areas where growth is expected, and how segments have recently performed. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster takes a look at trends in the adoption of languages and libraries for IC and ASIC designs and finds continued interest in System... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


The CXL Consortium published the Compute Express Link 2.0 specification. CXL is an interconnect that maintains memory coherency between the CPU memory space and memory on attached devices. CXL 2.0 adds support for switching for fan-out to connect to more devices, memory pooling for increased memory utilization efficiency and providing memory capacity on demand, and support for persistent memory... » read more

Roaring ’20s For The Chip Industry


2020 was a good year for the semiconductor industry and the EDA industry that fuels it, but 2021 has the opportunity to be even better. New end application markets continue to open, and what were once seen as technical hurdles are leading to a multitude of innovative solutions, all of which need suitable tooling. No company can afford to invest everywhere, and so for EDA companies, their rel... » read more

ISA Ownership Matters: A Tale of Three ISAs


An instruction set architecture (ISA) is crucial to the development of processors and their software ecosystems. In the last half century, the majority of ISAs have been owned by single companies, whether product companies for their own chips/systems or processor IP companies who licensed their processors to chip developers. Does ISA ownership matter? Let’s consider three proprietary ISAs a... » read more

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