Customizing Power And Performance


Designing chips is getting more difficult, and not just for the obvious technical reasons. The bigger issue revolves around what these chips going to be used for-and how will they be used, both by the end user and in the context of other electronics. This was a pretty simple decision when hardware was developed somewhat independently of software, such as in the PC era. Technology generally d... » read more

Bridging Machine Learning’s Divide


There is a growing divide between those researching [getkc id="305" comment="machine learning"] (ML) in the cloud and those trying to perform inferencing using limited resources and power budgets. Researchers are using the most cost-effective hardware available to them, which happens to be GPUs filled with floating point arithmetic units. But this is an untenable solution for embedded infere... » read more

Pushing Performance Limits


Trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of a chip sounds like a good idea, but it increases risk and cost, extends development time, reduced yield, and it may even limit the environments in which the chip can operate. And yet, given the amount of margin added at every step of the development process, it seems obvious that plenty of improvements could be made. "Every design can be o... » read more

Tech Talk: Applying Machine Learning


Norman Chang, chief technologist at ANSYS, talks about real applications of machine learning for mechanical, fluid dynamics and chip-package-system design. https://youtu.be/MqYX0wbwSfE » read more

Not All Ops Are Created Equal


Efficient and compact neural network models are essential for enabling the deployment on mobile and embedded devices. In this work, we point out that typical design metrics for gauging the efficiency of neural network architectures – total number of operations and parameters – are not sufficient. These metrics may not accurately correlate with the actual deployment metrics such as energy an... » read more

Deep Learning Spreads


Deep learning is gaining traction across a broad swath of applications, providing more nuanced and complex behavior than machine learning offers today. Those attributes are particularly important for safety-critical devices, such as assisted or autonomous vehicles, as well as for natural language processing where a machine can recognize the intent of words based upon the context of a convers... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 31


Cadence's Paul McLellan looks back at where TSMC was 30 years ago and the founding philosophy that made the foundry and fabless model work. In a video, Mentor's Colin Walls considers how to make the simplest possible multitasking scheduler with a one line RTOS. Synopsys' Sandeep Taneja checks out the technology behind airbags in cars and the role of the Motorola Serial Peripheral Interfac... » read more

Hedging The Chip Industry


The chip industry has changed significantly since the last big downturn. And while there is no indication a downturn is on the horizon, analysts are beginning to ask questions about what comes next. Inventory is building at systems companies because of weaknesses in some of the key markets such as mobile phones and tablet computers, and there is a growing risk of trade wars due to recently impo... » read more

Predictions: Methodologies And Tools


Predictions are divided into four posts this year. Part one covered markets and drivers. The second part looked at manufacturing, devices and companies and this part will cover methodologies and tools. In addition, the outlook from EDA executives will be provided in a separate post. Intellectual property As designs get larger, it should be no surprise that the size of the [getkc id="43" kc_... » read more

Predictions: Manufacturing, Devices And Companies


Some predictions are just wishful thinking, but most of these are a lot more thoughtful. They project what needs to happen for various markets or products to become successful. Those far reaching predictions may not fully happen within 2018, but we give everyone the chance to note the progress made towards their predictions at the end of the year. (See Reflection On 2017: Design And EDA and Man... » read more

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