AI Feeds Vision Processor, Image Sensor Boom


Vision systems are rapidly becoming ubiquitous, driven by big improvements in image sensors as well as new types of sensors. While the sensor itself often is developed using mature-node silicon, increasingly it is connected to vision processors developed at the most advanced process nodes. That allows for the highest performance per watt, and it also allows designs to incorporate AI accelera... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 2


Siemens EDA's Harry Foster examines how successful FPGA projects are in terms of verification effectiveness, finding that only 16% of all FPGA projects were able to achieve no non-trivial bug escapes into production, worse than IC/ASIC in terms of first silicon success. Synopsys' Jamie Boote and The Chertoff Group's David London break down best practice guidance and directives U.S. governmen... » read more

Chip Design Shifts As Fundamental Laws Run Out Of Steam


Dennard scaling is gone, Amdahl's Law is reaching its limit, and Moore's Law is becoming difficult and expensive to follow, particularly as power and performance benefits diminish. And while none of that has reduced opportunities for much faster, lower-power chips, it has significantly shifted the dynamics for their design and manufacturing. Rather than just different process nodes and half ... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, mobility Ford Motor Company revealed it lost $827 million in the third quarter because of parts shortages and unexpected supplier costs. Those shortages affected 40,000 to 50,000 vehicles. The company is shutting down its interest in its self-driving car unit Argo.ai, which it shared with Volkswagen since 2019. Ford will instead focus on advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS), which... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 26


Synopsys' Teng-Kiat Lee and Sandeep Mehndiratta argue that IC design in the cloud can support an existing on-prem strategy, enable large and small enterprises to manage cost and capacity more effectively, and offer security for valuable semiconductor IP. Siemens EDA's Chris Spear finds that SystemVerilog classes are a good way to encapsulate both variables and the routines that operates on t... » read more

Chip Challenges In The Metaverse


The metaverse is pushing the limits of chip design, despite uncertainty about how much raw horsepower these devices ultimately will require to deliver an immersive blend of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality. The big challenge in developing these systems is the ability to process mixed data types in real time while the data moves uninterrupted at lightning speed. That requires the integra... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 19


Siemens EDA's Harry Foster examines trends related to various aspects of FPGA design and the growing design complexity associated with increasing number of embedded processor cores, asynchronous clock domains, and more safety features. Synopsys' Twan Korthorst and Kenneth Larsen take a broad look at silicon photonics, including the benefits of electronic integration, accelerating the develop... » read more

Complex Tradeoffs In Inferencing Chips


Designing AI/ML inferencing chips is emerging as a huge challenge due to the variety of applications and the highly specific power and performance needs for each of them. Put simply, one size does not fit all, and not all applications can afford a custom design. For example, in retail store tracking, it's acceptable to have a 5% or 10% margin of error for customers passing by a certain aisle... » read more

Foundational Changes In Chip Architectures


We take many things in the semiconductor world for granted, but what if some of the decisions made decades ago are no longer viable or optimal? We saw a small example with finFETs, where the planar transistor would no longer scale. Today we are facing several bigger disruptions that will have much larger ripple effects. Technology often progresses in a linear fashion. Each step provides incr... » read more

The New Disruptive Force In High-End AIoT Markets


MediaTek is known for its SoC solutions in the mobile and consumer device markets. In fact, the smartphone market is now producing the most advanced and performant SoC designs on the planet. MediaTek is a vital part of this innovation. Each year it produces a range of chipsets for the mobile market, like the flagship Dimensity 9000 which adopted Arm’s v9 CPU and Mali-GPU technologies to del... » read more

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