Supporting CPUs Plus FPGAs (Part 1)


While it has been possible to pair a CPU and FPGA for quite some time, two things have changed recently. First, the industry has reduced the latency of the connection between them and second, we now appear to have the killer app for this combination. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these changes and the state of the tool chain to support this combination, with Kent Orthner, system... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor Graphics launched the company's third generation data-center friendly emulation platform, Veloce Strato. The emulator has a capacity of 2.5BG when fully loaded, and total capacity can be increased by linking emulators. It has available slots for 64 Advanced Verification Boards (AVBs) and fully loaded consumes up to 50KW (22.7 W/Mgate) of power. Aldec uncorked the latest versi... » read more

The Multiplier And The Singularity


In 1993, Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and science fiction writer, first described an event called the Singularity—the point when machine intelligence matches and then surpasses human intelligence. And since then, top scientists, engineers and futurists have been asking just how far away we are from that event. In 2006, Ray Kurzweil published a book, "The Singularity is Near," in whic... » read more

SiFive: Low-Cost Custom Silicon


One of the lessons learned years ago in the open-source Linux world is that free software isn't always good enough. Consequently, being able to add commercial value around freeware can turn into a lucrative business. Red Hat Software, for example, has turned this approach into a thriving multi-billion-dollar business. But nothing comparable has ever succeeded in the SoC world. Enter SiFi... » read more

FPGA VHDL Verification


By Espen Tallaksen This is actually possible – and with an average efficiency improvement of 20% to 50% for medium to high complexity FPGAs. Less for data path oriented designs and more for control or protocol oriented designs. At no extra cost. All that is required is that you do your testbench development the same way you do your design. Every single FPGA designer knows that a good to... » read more

What Comes After Moore’s Law And Dennard Scaling?


For decades, Moore’s Law has been an important semiconductor industry mainstay that has helped fuel a relentless progression in computing performance. However, most industry experts agree that Moore’s Law is waning, with an end on the horizon due to a combination of physical limitations and economic factors. With the loss of Dennard Scaling roughly 10 years ago, the industry is at a critica... » read more

An Easier Path To Faster C With FPGAs


For most scientists, what is inside a high-performance computing platform is a mystery. All they usually want to know is that a platform will run an advanced algorithm thrown at it. What happens when a subject matter expert creates a powerful model for an algorithm that in turn automatically generates C code that runs too slowly? FPGA experts have created an answer. More and more, the genera... » read more

Teaching Computers To See


Vision processing is emerging as a foundation technology for a number of high-growth applications, spurring a wave of intensive research to reduce power, improve performance, and push embedded vision into the mainstream to leverage economies of scale. What began as a relatively modest development effort has turned into an all-out race for a piece of this market, and for good reason. Mark... » read more

The Battle To Embed The FPGA


There have been many attempts to embed an [gettech id="31071" comment="FPGA"] into chips in the past, but the market has failed to materialize—or the solutions have failed to inspire. An early example was [getentity id="22924" comment="Triscend"], founded in 1997 and acquired by [getentity id="22839" e_name="Xilinx"] in 2004. It integrated a CPU—which varied from an [getentity id="22186" co... » read more

FPGAs Accelerating IoT Gateway And Infrastructure Tiers


The Internet of Things (IoT) has become the main topic in the technological world; it seems everybody is talking about it as the next wave in electronic systems. The scope of the IoT is so wide now, some have suggested changing the name to the Internet of Everything. We now expect all devices we use in our personal and professional lives to be connected, starting from the obvious ones in smartp... » read more

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