The Future Of 3D Stacking


By Ed Sperling Despite concerns about the lack of tools, an unstable process, questionable interconnects, thermal overloads and electrostatic discharge, 3D stacking appears to be making headway. At the very least, lots of companies of all sizes are betting heavily that it will succeed. The first wave, which is expected to start showing up late next year, will likely come from a handful of t... » read more

NoC Is Not A Noun


By Kurt Shuler Today in the IP and EDA business, I hear “knock” all the time, except people mean “NoC.” It seems everybody wants a NoC, or wants to offer you a NoC. I’m here to tell you that NoC is not a noun. A network-on-chip is a technology approach that can be used to transfer data and commands in many domains. When people in the IP and EDA businesses say NoC, they are usually... » read more

Connecting The Pieces


By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the amount of IP blocks being integrated in SoCs today – in some cases as many as 100 blocks in a single chip – SoC design methodologies are shifting to address the new challenges this complexity brings. The good news is that these integration challenges has put the spotlight on the issues—along with the skyrocketing development costs for the creation, qual... » read more

Balancing Quality, Cost And Locale


By Ann Steffora Mutschler As more features are packed into a single SoC there are simply more time-critical decisions to make. Instead of holding up one chip of a six-chip chipset, a delay or error on one chip can stop the whole parade. That explains why one of the most vibrant parts of the business at big EDA companies these days is standard IP, and why most of the other commercial IP make... » read more

Integrated IP Goes Vertical


By Ed Sperling The consolidation of intellectual property from small developers to large players with integrated IP blocks is accelerating. Large IP companies are now developing integrated suites that are pre-tested for specific vertical markets, and new companies are sprouting up to make it easier to put even broader collections of IP together in meaningful ways. It’s difficult to te... » read more

The Long And Painful Path To Power Optimization


By Ed Sperling Think about any mobile Internet device today. Batteries typically last all day, applications shut down with ease, and the number of things it can do has reached the point where many people typically carry one device on the road rather than multiple devices they used to lug around several years ago. Perhaps even more astounding is the price drop on these devices. A basic cell ... » read more

Remaking The Design Landscape


By Ed Sperling Every now and then a new trend comes along in the semiconductor design world, often because an old tool doesn’t work well anymore or because a new one is achieving critical mass. Lithography moved to immersion when the wavelength couldn’t be refracted far enough anymore. Designers at the advanced end of Moore’s Law began using tools like high-level synthesis and Transa... » read more

Stacked Dies Gain Attention, But So Far Little Traction


By Ed Sperling For the better part of two decades there has been a steady stream of predictions about the abrupt end of Moore’s Law, but it now appears the formula for doubling the number of transistors on a die every couple years will simply dissipate rather than fall off a cliff. While companies such as Intel and IBM continue to develop road maps that extend their road maps all the wa... » read more

Making Connections


By Ed Sperling The world is still full of engineers who can build fast interconnects to things like PCI Express or USB 2.0 who can create complex schematics for determining the connections between a processor core, memory, logic and various IP blocks on a piece of silicon. But over the next several years, many of those engineers will have to figure out new ways to make a living. The numbe... » read more

To Bus Or Not To Bus, That Is The Question


By Ann Steffora Mutschler When you hear the words, “block interface,” your ears may not perk up, but as system architects well understand, making the right choice between a bus or non-bus interface on an SoC is absolutely critical to design’s success in terms of power efficiency, reusability and performance. How many of the problems in new chip designs have to do with the interconne... » read more

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