Rethinking Big Iron


By Ann Steffora Mutschler One size does not fit all when it comes to the server market, and that may be the best option for low-power processor makers to gain a toehold in a world that until now has been almost laser-focused on performance. Even higher-performance versions of low-power processing architectures are starting to show up inside of datacenters. Many are application-specific ... » read more

Automotive Power Concerns


By Ann Steffora Mutschler With advanced semiconductor technologies infiltrating the automotive market in ever new and exciting ways, there are also challenges to implementation involving power. In fact, power has become a concern in many areas of automotive design. Consider the Tesla, for example. The dashboard features a 17” touchscreen with the entire vehicle controls. This system i... » read more

Watching And Waiting For DFP


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Although the semiconductor industry has been talking about the need to optimize SoC designs for power for many years, it is safe to say it’s still in the very early stages of the 'Design for Power' approach. That’s not to say that methodologies and tools are not in place. There are actually a number of options available, depending on the level of abstractio... » read more

Reflecting on the Future


Since returning from the Design Automation Conference, I’ve been reflecting on some very interesting discussions I had last week in Austin. The ones that are sticking with me concern the old, sequential algorithms that run EDA tools today. The fact is, given design complexity, they are running out of steam. As a result, the industry is looking at possibly leveraging GPUs since they may be ... » read more

RTL Signoff


Piyush Sancheti, Atrenta's vice president of product marketing, talks with Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering about where the pain points are in design and why RTL signoff has become so important. [youtube vid=8Ra1_VmzW50] » read more

Lessons Learned In 4G LTE


By Ann Steffora Mutschler While 4G LTE has moved into the mainstream, there are lessons to be learned about these very complex modems, especially from the perspective of balancing power and performance. The road to mainstream wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. “4G LTE initially got a bad rap for battery life, for power consumption,” said Pete Hardee, low-power design solution marketin... » read more

A Low-Power Riddle


By Cary Chin I’m thinking of a mobile electronic device, introduced in 2012, at the high end of its market segment, eventually to be named “Product of the Year” for 2012. But it wasn’t introduced without the usual flurry of energy-efficiency related problems, with initial complaints such as, “the product worked well, but the battery drained way too fast, even when it was turned off!�... » read more

A Balancing Act


By Ann Steffora Mutschler If you stay current on data center trends, you are well-versed on the fact that Intel reported last June energy proportionality has effectively doubled server efficiency and workload scaling beyond what Moore’s Law predicted. What does this have to do with power management of SoCs? Cary Chin, director of marketing for low-power solutions at Synopsys, said tha... » read more

Sprint To The Finish Line


By Ed Sperling Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering sat down to discuss future challenges, pain points, and how the supply chain is being reconfigured with Chi-Ping Hsu, senior vice president for R&D in the Silicon Realization Group at Cadence. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. LPHP: How important is it to be at the front end of Moore’s Law? Hsu: Strategically, it’... » read more

Experts At The Table: The Trouble With Low-Power Verification


By Ed Sperling Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering sat down to discuss low-power verification with Leah Clark, associate technical director at Broadcom; Erich Marschner, product marketing manager at Mentor Graphics; Cary Chin, director of marketing for low-power solutions at Synopsys; and Venki Venkatesh, senior director of engineering at Atrenta. What follows are excerpts of that conversat... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →