Blog Review: Apr. 18


Cadence's Meera Collier provides an overview of five emerging technologies that could drive the semiconductor industry in the future, from carbon nanotubes to quantum computing. Mentor's Colin Walls reminds embedded software developers of a few common sense tips, including better readability with braces in C/C++ and monitoring stack overflow. Synopsys' Tim Mackey rounds up the last few we... » read more

Architecture, Materials And Software


AI, machine learning and autonomous vehicles will require massive improvements in performance, at the same power consumption level (or better), over today's chips. But it's obvious that the usual approach of shrinking features to improve power/performance isn't going to be sufficient. Scaling will certainly help, particularly on the logic side. More transistors are needed to process a huge i... » 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

Ultra-Low Power Memory IPs Using Mentor coolSRAM-6T Technology


The use of embedded static random access memory (eSRAM) in complex ICs has significantly increased in the past three decades. This trend will continue with the growth of ICs designed for rapidly expanding markets such as automotive, virtual reality (VR) / augmented reality (AR), implantable medical devices, gaming, sensor hub, medical devices, wearable computing, data center, and artificial int... » 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

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Synopsys acquired Silicon and Beyond, a provider of high-speed SerDes and ADC/DAC IP. The company was founded in 2012 as SilabTech and headquartered in Bangalore. Synopsys highlighted the team of R&D engineers with high-speed SerDes expertise that would be joining with the acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. ANSYS will acquire OPTIS, a provider of software for sci... » read more

The New Deep Learning Memory Architectures You Should Know About


Artificial intelligence (AI) has come a long way. While our parents grew up with the dream to one day roam with robots, today we are interviewing Sophia, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, who is also the first humanoid robot to be granted a citizenship in any country. Deep learning, a brain-inspired discipline of AI has been around for a long time but has only recently taken off due to abundant data, ... » read more

How AI Impacts Memory Systems


Throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s computer systems were bottlenecked by relatively slow CPU performance, thereby limiting what applications could do. Driven by Moore’s Law, transistor counts increased significantly over the years, improving system performance and enabling exciting new computing possibilities. Although computing capabilities have advanced significantly in recen... » read more

Will China Succeed In Memory?


China's fledging memory makers are expected to reach a major milestone and move into initial production this year, although vendors are already running into various roadblocks. China's domestic vendors are focusing on two markets, 3D NAND and DRAM. In both cases local vendors are either behind in technology, struggling to develop these products, or both. And one vendor recently was hit with ... » read more

Understanding Memory


New semiconductor applications are ever changing and improving our lives, from new smartphones and wearables to healthcare, factory automation, and artificial intelligence. The humble memory chip working in the background plays a critical role in enabling these technologies. For example, that awesome picture you just took would be lost forever without memory. Your computer can’t perform the i... » read more

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