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

Always-On DSPs


There are tradeoffs between powering circuits down to save power and waking them up to respond to voice and visual commands. Prakash Madhvapathy, director of product marketing and product management at Cadence, talks about the best ways to deploy digital signal processors, why multiple DSPs are often better than just one, and what penalties there are for various approaches. » read more

Batteries Take Center Stage


For any mobile electronic device, the biggest limiting factors are the size, age, type, and utilization of the batteries. Battery technology is improving on multiple fronts. The batteries themselves are becoming more efficient. They are storing more energy per unit of area, and work is underway to provide faster charging and to increase the percentage of that energy that can be used, as well... » read more

Can Coherent Optics Reduce Data-Center Power?


As optical bandwidth requirements increase, system designers are turning to “coherent” modulation schemes that can place more data on the same laser light, and lower power over long connections. A newer question is whether those savings could be achieved for short connections within data centers, as well. “Coherent is the direction everything's moving, because for a given system and... » read more

Aprisa Place-And-Route For Low-Power SoCs


The Aprisa digital design software helps designers address the many challenges of low-power designs. Aprisa is the most flexible IC place-and-route tool on the market—it accepts all industry-standard power formats, has excellent correlation to third-party signoff tools, and is easy to install, set up, and use. With effective technology and impressive usability, the Aprisa software ensures cos... » read more

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