Thinking About AI Power In Parallel


Most AI chips being developed today run highly parallel series of multiply/accumulate (MAC) operations. More processors and accelerators equate to better performance. This is why it's not uncommon to see chipmakers stitching together multiple die that are larger than a single reticle. It's also one of the reasons so much attention is being paid to moving to the next process node. It's not ne... » read more

Reducing Power At RTL


Power management and reduction at the register transfer level is becoming more problematic as more heterogeneous elements are added into advanced designs and more components are dependent on interactions with other components. This has been a growing problem in leading-edge designs for the past couple of process nodes, but similar issues have begun creeping into less-sophisticated designs as... » read more

Changes In AI SoCs


Kurt Shuler, vice president of marketing at ArterisIP, talks about the tradeoffs in AI SoCs, which range from power and performance to flexibility, depending on whether processing elements are highly specific or more general, and the need for more modeling of both hardware and software together. » read more

Tradeoffs In Embedded Vision SoCs


Gordon Cooper, product marketing manager for embedded vision processors at Synopsys, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the need for more performance in these devices, how that impacts power, and what can be done to optimize both prior to manufacturing. » read more

Analog: Avoid Or Embrace?


We live in an analog world, but digital processing has proven quicker, cheaper and easier. Moving digital data around is only possible while the physics of wires can be safely abstracted away enough to provide reliable communications. As soon as a signal passes off-chip, the analog domain reasserts control for modern systems. Each of those transitions requires a data converter. The usage ... » read more

What Engineers Are Reading And Watching


By Brian Bailey And Ed Sperling An important indicator of where the chip industry is heading is what engineers are reading and what videos they are watching. While some subjects remain on top, such as the level of interest in the latest manufacturing technologies, other areas come and go. The stories with the biggest traffic numbers are almost identical to last year. Readers want to know wh... » read more

Interdependencies Complicate IC Power Grid Design


Creating the right power grid is a growing problem in leading-edge chips. IP and SoC providers are spending a considerable amount of time defining the architecture of logic libraries in order to enable different power grids to satisfy the needs of different market segments. The end of Dennard scaling is one of the reasons for the increased focus. With the move to smaller nodes, the amount of... » read more

Reducing Data At The Source


Jens Döge, group manager for image acquisition and processing in Fraunhofer IIS’ Engineering of Adaptive Systems Division, talks about how to slash the amount of data that needs to be sent to the cloud or edge for processing by focusing only on the regions of interest in an image, and how that reduces the cost of moving that data. » read more

Power Complexity On The Rise


New chip architectures and custom applications are adding significant challenges to chip design and verification, and the problems are becoming much more complex as low power is added into the mix. Power always has been a consideration in design, but in the past it typically involved different power domains that were either on, off, or in some level of sleep mode. As hardware architectures s... » read more

Tricky Tradeoffs For LPDDR5


LPDDR5 is slated as the next-gen memory for AI technology, autonomous driving, 5G networks, advanced displays, and leading-edge camera applications, and it is expected to compete with GDDR6 for these applications. But like all next-gen applications, balancing power, performance, and area concerns against new technology options is not straightforward. These are interesting times in the memory... » read more

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