What Is An xPU?


Almost every day there is an announcement about a new processor architecture, and it is given a three-letter acronym — TPU, IPU, NPU. But what really distinguishes them? Are there really that many unique processor architectures, or is something else happening? In 2018, John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson delivered the Turing lecture entitled, "A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture... » read more

Software-Hardware Co-Design Becomes Real


For the past 20 years, the industry has sought to deploy hardware/software co-design concepts. While it is making progress, software/hardware co-design appears to have a much brighter future. In order to understand the distinction between the two approaches, it is important to define some of the basics. Hardware/software co-design is essentially a bottom-up process, where hardware is deve... » read more

Mythic Case Study


Mythic, the provider of a unique AI compute platform, was designing an innovative intelligence processing unit (IPU) and found themselves in need of a small, power-efficient, yet programmable core to take care of specific supporting functions. As no off-the-shelf core would exactly match the needs and customization proved challenging, Mythic eventually opted for a complete solution by Codasip. ... » read more

Designing An AI SoC


Susheel Tadikonda, vice president of networking and storage at Synopsys, looks at how to achieve economies of scale in AI chips and where the common elements are across all the different architectures. https://youtu.be/fm0kxnj3DuM » read more