Deploying Accurate Always-On Face Unlock


Accurate face verification has long been considered a challenge due to the number of variables, ranging from lighting to pose and facial expression. This white paper looks at a new approach — combining classic and modern machine learning (deep learning) techniques — that achieves 98.36% accuracy, running efficiently on Arm ML-optimized platforms, and addressing key security issues such a... » read more

Unleashing The World’s Technology Potential


A year ago, as I prepared for my opening keynote at Arm TechCon, our biggest annual ecosystem gathering, we were already debating the event’s future focus. Complexity was driving new technology paths as we looked at how we’d engineer a global network of AI, IoT and 5G-driven devices from chip to cloud. We knew that dealing with that complexity would require fundamental changes in our techno... » read more

112G SerDes Reliability


Priyank Shukla, product marketing manager at Synopsys, digs into 112Gbps SerDes, why it’s important to examine the performance of these devices in the context of a system, what is acceptable channel loss, and how density can affect performance, power and noise. » read more

For AI Hardware, Power Optimization Starts With Software And Ends At Silicon


Artificial intelligence (AI) processing hardware has emerged as a critical piece of today’s tech innovation. AI hardware architecture is very symmetric with large arrays of up to thousands of processing elements (tiles), leading to billion+ gate designs and huge power consumption. For example, the Tesla auto-pilot software stack consumes 72W of power, while the neural network accelerator cons... » read more

Semiconductors And The Climate Curve


On July 22 I participated in a panel at the virtual SEMICON West conference called “Bending the Climate Curve: Enabling Sustainable Growth of Big Data, AI, and Cloud Computing.” Virtual conferences are mandatory these days, but give a different experience than physical ones. They are very good at disseminating information and are reasonably effective at networking. But, in my experience... » read more

A 10.5 μW Programmable SAR ADC Frontend With SC Preamplifier For Low-Power IoT Sensor Nodes


Massive deployment of wireless autonomous sensor nodes requires their lifetime extension and cost reduction. The analog frontend (AFE) plays a key role in this context. This paper presents a successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC) with a switched-capacitor programmable gain switched preamplifier (SC PGSA), as a basic component of an integrated ultra-low power AFE... » read more

Easier Low Power ICs With Reference Flows


By Terence Chen and Alexander Volkov Power-sensitive ICs for wearables and internet of things (IoT) products are in demand for markets ranging from automotive to military/aerospace to consumer. As with most ICs, cost and time-to-market pressures are important determiners of success. Reducing risk by using a vendor-created reference flow can confer a serious business advantage. Reference f... » read more

Designing For Extreme Low Power


There are several techniques available for low power design, but whenever a nanowatt or picojoule matters, all available methods must be used. Some of the necessary techniques are different from those used for high-end designs. Others have been lost over time because their impact was considered too small, or not worth the additional design effort. But for devices that last a lifetime on a si... » read more

Low-Power Analog


Analog circuitry is usually a small part of a large SoC, but it does not scale in the same way as digital circuitry under Moore's Law. The power consumed by analog is becoming an increasing concern, especially for battery-operated devices. At the same time, little automation is available to help analog designers reduce consumption. "Newer consumer devices, like smartphones and wearables, alo... » read more

Security From The Ground Up


Silicon and system design are complex and costly enough in the ultra-deep sub-micron era. Now factor in security. Virtually every end application requires some level of security, and, as the cybersecurity threat rises, the importance and value of trust and assurance rises as well. This is even more evident in “high-security” use cases such as smart cards used to enter buildings, SIM card... » read more

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