Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Cadence will be capturing design insights from Presto Engineering, an ASIC designer working on high-performance system-in-package (SiP) development for the automotive and Industrial IoT markets. Presto, which also provides semiconductor services such as test and qualification, will use Cadence’s EDA and analysis tools (Allegro X Package Designer Plus, Clarity 3D Solver, Sigrity Xt... » read more

Architectural Considerations For AI


Custom chips, labeled as artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML), are appearing on a weekly basis, each claiming to be 10X faster than existing devices or consume 1/10 the power. Whether that is enough to dethrone existing architectures, such as GPUs and FPGAs, or whether they will survive alongside those architectures isn't clear yet. The problem, or the opportunity, is that t... » read more

There’s More To Machine Learning Than CNNs


Neural networks – and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in particular – have received an abundance of attention over the last few years, but they're not the only useful machine-learning structures. There are numerous other ways for machines to learn how to solve problems, and there is room for alternative machine-learning structures. “Neural networks can do all this really comple... » read more

Configuring AI Chips


Change is almost constant in AI systems. Vinay Mehta, technical product marketing manager at Flex Logix, talks about the need for flexible architectures to deal with continual modifications in algorithms, more complex convolutions, and unforeseen system interactions, as well as the ability to apply all of this over longer chip lifetimes. Related Dynamically Reconfiguring Logic A differ... » read more

The Case For FPGAs In Cars


Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) thrive in rapidly evolving new markets before being replaced by hard-wired ASICs, but in automotive that crossover is likely to happen significantly later than in the past. Historically, FPGAs have held temporary positions until volumes increased enough to cost-reduce the FPGAs out in favor of a hardened version. With automobiles, there are so many chan... » read more

Integrating Embedded FPGA Made Easy


Chip designers have been integrating hard and soft IPs for decades – some being easy to integrate and others much more difficult. But what about eFPGA? It’s a relatively new IP on the IP landscape and according to data from Gartner, the market share of semiconductors with eFPGA is expected to approach $10B in 2023 with greater than 50% compounded annual growth. So, this raises the question ... » read more

The Increasingly Uneven Race To 3nm/2nm


Several chipmakers and fabless design houses are racing against each other to develop processes and chips at the next logic nodes in 3nm and 2nm, but putting these technologies into mass production is proving both expensive and difficult. It's also beginning to raise questions about just how quickly those new nodes will be needed and why. Migrating to the next nodes does boost performance an... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Synopsys completed its acquisition of MorethanIP, a provider of Ethernet Digital Controller IP supporting data rates from 10G to 800G. The acquisition adds MAC (Medium Access Controller) and PCS (Physical Coding Sublayer) for 200G/400G and 800G Ethernet to Synopsys’ portfolio. The company also provides Time-Sensitive Networking, Fibre Channel, and Ethernet Switching IP for integration into AS... » read more

Why Reconfigurability Is Essential For AI Edge Inference Throughput


For a neural network to run at its fastest, the underlying hardware must run efficiently on all layers. Through the inference of any CNN—whether it be based on an architecture such as YOLO, ResNet, or Inception—the workload regularly shifts from being bottlenecked by memory to being bottlenecked by compute resources. You can think of each convolutional layer as its own mini-workload, and so... » read more

Startup Funding: March 2021


Self-driving vehicles revved up investors in March, with two companies receiving over $200M apiece as they prepare for their systems to enter mass production. One focuses on software for passenger vehicles, while the other is looking to autonomous trucks. Both of the companies received investment from automakers, with China's largest carmaker SAIC joining each of the funding rounds. It was also... » read more

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