MCU Changes At The Edge


Microcontrollers are becoming a key platform for processing machine learning at the edge due to two significant changes. First, they now can include multiple cores, including some for high performance and others for low power, as well as other specialized processing elements such as neural network accelerators. Second, machine learning algorithms have been pruned to the point where inferencing ... » read more

Aeonic Generate GGM High Performance SoC Clock Generation Module


Core counts have been increasing steadily since IBM's debut of the Power 4 in 2001, eclipsing 100 CPU cores and over 1,000 for AI accelerators. While sea of processor architectures feature a stamp and repeat design, per-core workloads aren't always going to be symmetrically balanced. For example, a cloud provider (AI or compute) will rent out individual core clusters to customers for specialize... » read more

PLANAR: A Programmable Accelerator For Near-Memory Data Rearrangement


Many applications employ irregular and sparse memory accesses that cannot take advantage of existing cache hierarchies in high performance processors. To solve this problem, Data Layout Transformation (DLT) techniques rearrange sparse data into a dense representation, improving locality and cache utilization. However, prior proposals in this space fail to provide a design that (i) scales with m... » read more

Simplifying AI Edge Deployment


Barrie Mullins, vice president of product at Flex Logix, explains how a programmable accelerator chip can simplify semiconductor design at the edge, where chips need to be high performance as well as low power, yet developing everything from scratch is too expensive and time-consuming. Programmability allows these systems to stay current with changes in algorithms, which can affect everything f... » read more

Deep Reinforcement Learning to Dynamically Configure NoC Resources


New research paper titled "Deep Reinforcement Learning Enabled Self-Configurable Networks-on-Chip for High-Performance and Energy-Efficient Computing Systems" from Md Farhadur Reza at Eastern Illinois University. Find the open access technical paper here. Published June 2022. M. F. Reza, "Deep Reinforcement Learning Enabled Self-Configurable Networks-on-Chip for High-Performance and Energ... » read more

Speeding Up AI Algorithms


AI at the edge is very different than AI in the cloud. Salvador Alvarez, solution architect director at Flex Logix, talks about why a specialized inferencing chip with built-in programmability is more efficient and scalable than a general-purpose processor, why high-performance models are essential for getting accurate real-time results, and how low power and ambient temperatures can affect the... » read more

Designing High-Performance Electronics For Today’s Hyperconnected Systems


With the rapid evolution of hyperconnected devices that are managing constant and near-instantaneous data from anywhere and at any time, designing at each new technology node must overcome design and integration complexity. To do so requires automated solutions to process the scale of modern designs. Cadence system analysis solutions operate on unimaginably huge amounts of data, scaling algorit... » read more

Domain-Specific Memory


Domain-specific computing may be all the rage, but it is avoiding the real problem. The bigger concern is the memories that throttle processor performance, consume more power, and take up the most chip area. Memories need to break free from the rigid structures preferred by existing software. When algorithms and memory are designed together, improvements in performance are significant and pr... » read more

Usage Models Driving Data Center Architecture Changes


Data center architectures are undergoing a significant change, fueled by more data and much greater usage from remote locations. Part of this shift involves the need to move some processing closer to the various memory hierarchies, from SRAM to DRAM to storage. There is more data to process, and it takes less energy and time to process that data in place. But workloads also are being distrib... » read more

Hidden Costs In Faster, Low-Power AI Systems


Chipmakers are building orders of magnitude better performance and energy efficiency into smart devices, but to achieve those goals they also are making tradeoffs that will have far-reaching, long-lasting, and in some cases unknown impacts. Much of this activity is a direct result of pushing intelligence out to the edge, where it is needed to process, sort, and manage massive increases in da... » read more

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