The Week In Review: System-Level Design


A widely quoted report by Bloomberg said ARM might benefit from a major deal with Google, which is considering using ARM cores in its own processor designs. It's impossible to tell at this point whether Google actually will go through with developing its own chips, a move that would have monumental ramifications in multiple areas. For one thing it would give ARM a major entry into the data cent... » read more

Rethinking The Data Center


Ever since the introduction of the PC, the biggest challenge in computing has been more about getting software to take advantage of multiple processors or cores than getting the chips to run faster. Ironically, this issue was solved decades ago inside of data centers. Enterprise applications, built on databases, have always been relatively easy to parse so that individual pieces can be run sepa... » read more

Big Iron Conundrums


Enormous attention is being focused on energy efficiency in mobile devices because time between charges trumps a slight boost in performance. Inside of data centers those benefits are far less clear. While energy costs remain a huge factor—they are a visible part of the bottom line costs for a CIO—how to reduce those costs is anything but a simple equation. Just adding more energy-saving... » read more

Taking Aim At Big Data


By Ed Sperling As the Internet of Things bridges the gap between the mobile and big data worlds, EDA and IP vendors increasingly are looking well beyond their usual boundaries. How successful they are at moving upward into a market that is far less price-sensitive remains to be seen. But from a technology standpoint, at least, the issues encountered by data centers and cloud providers are ... » read more

A Balancing Act


By Ann Steffora Mutschler If you stay current on data center trends, you are well-versed on the fact that Intel reported last June energy proportionality has effectively doubled server efficiency and workload scaling beyond what Moore’s Law predicted. What does this have to do with power management of SoCs? Cary Chin, director of marketing for low-power solutions at Synopsys, said tha... » read more

Looking Upstream


The majority of attention in energy efficiency is focused on consumer pain—how long a device can last between charges—but the real quantum leaps are happening further upstream these days. This is good news for a couple of reasons. First, it provides lots of opportunity for semiconductors in a market where pricing is much more elastic. Companies are willing to pay for energy savings, whic... » read more

Power Shift


By Ed Sperling For the past decade, most of the real gains in energy efficiency were developed for chips inside mobile electronics because of the demand for longer battery life. Dark silicon now represents the majority of mobile devices, multiple power islands are commonplace to push many functions into deep sleep, and performance is usually the secondary concern for most applications. Whil... » read more

Low Power Everywhere


By Kiran Vittal School is over for my kids and the summer holidays are here. We are planning to make minor modifications to our home, which includes installation of recessed lights. LED light bulbs are all over the place in home appliance stores and they claim 85% savings in energy costs with a life span of 50,000 hours. The cost of these LED bulbs is five to six times the cost of your average... » read more

Low Power Drives New Architectures


By Pallab Chatterjee Power became the driving discussion at several major events last month. The global cries for energy reduction, which have been mainstream since the early 1970s on the political level, have now moved to being real economic realities for component and systems suppliers. Chipmakers are finding that lower power makes good economic sense—lower cost of packaging, lower cost... » read more

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