Blog Review: Dec. 23


Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out how Arm is becoming a powerhouse in the server and high-end space with the addition of new R&D and a focus on getting the most out of its architecture. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster continues his look at verification trends in FPGAs by checking out adoption of different simulation and formal technologies. Synopsys' Taylor Armerding looks ahead to 2021 w... » read more

RISC-V Verification Challenges Spread


The RISC-V ecosystem is struggling to keep pace with rapid innovation and customization, which is increasing the amount of verification work required for each design and spreading that work out across more engineers at more companies. The historical assumption is that verification represents 60% to 80% or more of SoC project effort in terms of cost and time for a mature, mainstream processor... » read more

Industry Transformations In 2021 And Beyond


Last December, the name of my predictions blog summarized my view crisply, which is that "applications, ecosystems and system complexity will be key verification drivers for 2020." Slam dunk on these. Application domains significantly impacted verification aspects in 2020. Who would have thought that Facebook and AWS would be among the keynotes at our user conference, speaking about how thei... » read more

Stretching Engineers


Engineering has one constant — you innovate or fall by the wayside. That is true both for the things that are designed and for the engineers who design and build them. Today’s systems are putting new strains on engineers who can no longer be "tall and thin" or "short and fat." Those descriptions pertain to an engineer who is either highly specialized or one who has much broader experience. ... » read more

Multicore Debug Evolves To The System-Level


The proliferation and expansion of multicore architectures is making debug much more difficult and time-consuming, which in turn is increasing demand for more comprehensive system-level tools and approaches. Multicore/multiprocessor designs are the most complex devices to debug. More interactions and interdependencies between cores mean more things possibly can go wrong. In fact, so many pro... » read more

Chiplets And Heterogeneous Packaging Are Changing System Design And Analysis


In the domain of electronic product design, solely relying on process shrink as the primary driver of product innovation and improved system performance is no longer a viable approach. The cost and complexity associated with advanced nodes has everyone looking for alternatives to the traditional monolithic system on chip (SoC). The path most are taking leads to the world of “More than Moore�... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools, Cloud, IP Valtrix Systems updated its STING design verification tool for RISC-V based CPU and SoC implementations. Version 1.9.0 adds support to verify recent changes to the RISC-V user and privilege specifications, including draft versions of the vector and bit manipulation standard extensions. Preliminary support for the draft version of the RISC-V hypervisor extension has also been a... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Austin, Texas-based automotive startup Uhnder raised $45 million in Series C funding for its digital radar-on-chip. Telechips, a fabless semiconductor company that works on automotive SoCs, is using Arm’s IP to design its Dolphin5 SoC for ADAS (advanced drive assistance systems) and digital cockpits with in-vehicle infotainment (IVI). Dolphin5 will include the Arm’s Mali-G78A... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 16


Arm's Benoit Labbe investigates why battery monitoring is so important for a low-power microcontroller and shows how it was implemented in the M0N0 MCU while drawing a fraction of a nW in typical conditions. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster takes a look at how much of their time FPGA design engineers spend on verification, and the tasks that keep verification engineers the busiest. Synopsys' Sc... » read more

Power Models For Machine Learning


AI and machine learning are being designed into just about everything, but the chip industry lacks sufficient tools to gauge how much power and energy an algorithm is using when it runs on a particular hardware platform. The missing information is a serious limiter for energy-sensitive devices. As the old maxim goes, you can't optimize what you can't measure. Today, the focus is on functiona... » read more

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