Power Domain Implementation Challenges Escalate


The number power domains is rising as chip architects build finer-grained control into chips and systems, adding significantly to the complexity of the overall design effort. Different power domains are an essential ingredient in partitioning of different functions. This approach allows different chips in a package, and different blocks in an SoC, to continue running with just enough power t... » read more

Can Analog Make A Comeback?


We live in an analog world dominated by digital processing, but that could change. Domain specificity, and the desire for greater levels of optimization, may provide analog compute with some significant advantages — and the possibility of a comeback. For the last four decades, the advantages of digital scaling and flexibility have pushed the dividing line between analog and digital closer ... » read more

Transforming AI Models For Accelerator Chips


AI is all about speeding up the movement and processing of data. Ali Cheraghi, solution architect at Flex Logix, talks about why floating point data needs to be converted into integer point data, how that impacts power and performance, and how different approaches in quantization play into this formula. » read more

More Options, Less Dark Silicon


Chipmakers are beginning to re-examine how much dark silicon should be used in a heterogenous system, where it works best, and what alternatives are available — a direct result of a slowdown in Moore's Law scaling and the increasing disaggregation of SoCs. The concept of dark silicon has been around for a couple decades, but it really began taking off with the introduction of the Internet ... » 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

Energy Harvesting Starting To Gain Traction


Tens of billions of IoT devices are powered by batteries today. Depending on the compute intensity and the battery chemistry, these devices can run steadily for short periods of time, or they can run occasionally for decades. But in some cases, they also can either harvest energy themselves, or tap into externally harvested energy, allowing them to work almost indefinitely. Energy harvesting... » read more

Power Now First-Order Concern In More Markets


Concerns about energy and power efficiency are becoming as important as performance in markets where traditionally there has been a significant gap, setting the stage for significant shifts in both chip architectures and in how those ICs are designed in the first place. This shift can be seen in a growing number of applications and vertical segments. It includes mobile devices, where batteri... » read more

Why Comparing Processors Is So Difficult


Every new processor claims to be the fastest, the cheapest, or the most power frugal, but how those claims are measured and the supporting information can range from very useful to irrelevant. The chip industry is struggling far more than in the past to provide informative metrics. Twenty years ago, it was relatively easy to measure processor performance. It was a combination of the rate at ... » read more

Why Data Center Power Will Never Come Down


Data centers have become significant consumers of energy. In order to deal with the proliferation of data centers and the servers within them, there is a big push to reduce the energy consumption of all data center components. With all that effort, will data center power really come down? The answer is no, despite huge improvements in energy efficiency. “Keeping data center power consum... » read more

SoC Power Methodology: Are We Lean Enough


It’s interesting how past lessons learned have such relevance in today’s quest for an optimum system-on chip (SoC) power methodology. Lean manufacturing was introduced by the Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1930s. It is now an essential methodology in most manufacturing and industrial settings. As lean methodology evolved, it extended to software development where its principles have led to... » read more

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