Dealing With Performance Bottlenecks In SoCs


A surge in the amount of data that SoCs need to process is bogging down performance, and while the processors themselves can handle that influx, memory and communication bandwidth are straining. The question now is what can be done about it. The gap between memory and CPU bandwidth — the so-called memory wall — is well documented and definitely not a new problem. But it has not gone away... » read more

Asynchronous Is Mostly Academic


There are a number of interesting technologies to keep an eye on in term of how and when they could be adopted for use in SoC design today, some of which include gallium arsenide, GPGPUs, 3D ICs and asynchronous logic. Asynchronous logic promises a number of benefits in some specific application areas, and one that buoys to the surface for potential near-term use is in the area of security a... » read more

The Smartphonification Of Things


By Ann Steffora Mutschler The term, ‘Internet of Things,’ was first coined more than a decade ago by technology visionary Kevin Ashton but has slowly trickled down to the world of chip design and is now mentioned constantly in conversation. The reason is simple: System-level design tools are getting sophisticated enough to handle the intricacies required by devices in an Internet of ... » read more