Predicting The Future For Semiconductors


Is it possible to predict the future? Of course not. We all make projections of what happened in the past, where they are now, and the implications for the future. We bias that in various ways and think we are making some astounding revelation, which is highly unlikely to become true. Of course, by luck, some people get it right and they are bestowed with grand accolades and awards. The likelih... » read more

The Design Automation Conference Turns 60! What’s Hot? What’s Next?


This coming week from July 9th to July 13th, experts from all over the world will descend on the Moscone Center in San Francisco to discuss aspects of what we call "Electronic Design Automation" (EDA) and typically associate with hardware development. There will be many celebratory elements this year, given the milestone of 60 years. Industry luminary Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli will give o... » read more

Advantages, Disadvantages, And Use Cases Of FPGAs


A technical paper titled “Data Processing with FPGAs on Modern Architectures” was published by researchers at ETH Zürich. Abstract: "Trends in hardware, the prevalence of the cloud, and the rise of highly demanding applications have ushered an era of specialization that is quickly changing the way data is processed at scale. These changes are likely to continue and accelerate in the next... » read more

Automated Tool Flow From Domain-Specific Languages To Generate Massively Parallel Accelerators on HBM-Equipped FPGAs


A new technical paper titled "Automatic Creation of High-bandwidth Memory Architectures from Domain-specific Languages: The Case of Computational Fluid Dynamics" was published by researchers at Politecnico di Milano and TU Dresden. The paper states "In this article, we propose an automated tool flow from a domain-specific language for tensor expressions to generate massively parallel acceler... » read more

Using Formal Verification To Optimize HLS-Produced Circuits (ETH Zurich)


A new technical paper titled "Eliminating Excessive Dynamism of Dataflow Circuits Using Model Checking" was published by researchers at ETH Zurich. Abstract "Recent HLS efforts explore the generation of dynamically scheduled, dataflow circuits from high-level code; their ability to adapt the schedule at runtime to particular data and control outcomes promises superior performance to standar... » read more

The End Of Closed EDA


In a previous life, I was a technologist for a large EDA company. One of my primary responsibilities in that position involved talking to a lot of customers to identify their pain points, and what new tools we could develop that would ease their problems. You would think that would be an easy task, but it certainly was not the case. For example, if you ask a developer what their biggest frus... » read more

Designing for FPGA Accelerators


This research paper titled "High-Level Synthesis Hardware Design for FPGA-based Accelerators: Models, Methodologies, and Frameworks" was published by researchers at Università degli Studi di Trieste (Italy), Universidad Nacional de San Luis (Argentina), and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Italy). According to the paper's abstract, "This paper presents a survey ... » read more

Heterogeneous Redundant Circuit Design Approaches for FPGAs


New research paper titled "Evaluation of Directive-based Heterogeneous Redundant Design Approaches for Functional Safety Systems on FPGAs" from researchers at Nagasaki University. Abstract (Partial) "In this paper, we present and evaluates two heterogeneous redundant circuit design approaches for FPGAs: a resource-level approach and strategy-level approach. The resource-level approach foc... » read more

Toward Democratized IC Design And Customized Computing


Integrated circuit (IC) design is often considered a “black art,” restricted to only those with advanced degrees or years of training in electrical engineering. Given that the semiconductor industry is struggling to expand its workforce, IC design must be rendered more accessible. The benefit of customized computing General-purpose computers are widely used, but their performance improv... » read more

High-Level Synthesis: It’s Still Hardware Design


Hardware design using HLS is no different than the typical ASIC/FPGA design flow with the exception that C++/SystemC is being used along with HLS to create the RTL instead of hand coding it. The advantage of using HLS is that it speeds up RTL creation time and reduces verification time by producing bug free RTL quickly from a fully verified C++/SystemC source. The misconception that still exist... » read more

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