How to Design SmartNICs Using FPGAs to Increase Server Compute Capacity


Intelligent server adapters, or SmartNICs, boost server performance in cloud and private data centers by offloading network processing workloads and tasks from server CPUs. Offloading network processing to a SmartNIC is not a new concept — for example, there are NICs that offload some network-processing functions such as checksum computation and segmentation. However, the rapid explosion in d... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 19


Applied Materials' David Thompson shares the new DARPA program that is focused on using correlated electrons to develop a new type of switch with quantum effects, potentially leading to unprecedented switching speeds. Mentor's Joe Hupcey III argues that for the most effective formal analysis, assertions should be as simple as possible and shares some tips on decomposing big assertions. Ca... » read more

Carriers Push Datacenter-Style Virtualization


The world’s largest telco carriers are leading a broad movement to bring data center-style virtualization to the core of their telecommunications networks. In an industry known for being extremely conservative when it comes to change, this one appears to be significant. The move has set off a scramble among a number of companies for unified control and forwarding plane designs, starting fr... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Embedded Mentor Graphics released a new version of their Nucleus RTOS with a focus on high-performance IoT and wearable applications. Updates include support for Dynamic Linking and Loading (DLL) capabilities in Cortex-M based cores; the ability for developers to reconfigure, update, and provision connected embedded devices that utilize cloud-based remote software services; and TI WiLink 8 m... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 3


Mentor's Robin Bornoff zeroes in on some of the biggest and most frustrating causes of energy loss—the ones that have nothing to do with the intended task. In electronics, it's a question of how much power is consumed pushing around electrons and photons. Cadence's Richard Goering follows a panel discussion about whether we're really making progress in low-power design, where the challeng... » read more