Data Boom Puts Pressure On NoCs, Fabrics


Key Takeaways: NoC challenges, such as wiring congestion, timing closure, and performance, must be considered in tandem with topology and placement. Topologies can be customized to meet an application’s specific data flow needs, with a system containing multiple topologies to suit different data or zones. What is challenging for one type of system, such as an SoC, switch, or AI chi... » read more

Accelerating IP Reuse


Semiconductors are no longer monolithic designs developed by a single company. There is more third-party IP from different sources — as many as 1,000 different IPs in a complex SoC — and all of that needs to be integrated and work as one system, something that can require a lot of effort and time. Insaf Meliane, product management and marketing director at Arteris, talks about how the new v... » read more

Data Movement Is the Energy Bottleneck of Today’s SoCs


In today’s AI-focused semiconductor landscape, raw compute performance alone no longer defines the effectiveness of a system-on-chip (SoC). The efficiency of data movement across the chip has become just as important. Whether designed for data centers or edge AI devices, SoCs must now prioritize data transport as a core architectural consideration. Moving data efficiently across the silicon f... » read more

Combination of Coherent and Non-Coherent NoCs Facilitates Cutting-Edge SoC Design


SCALINX, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in the design of system-on-chip (SoC) devices, was looking to develop a large, next-generation SoC integrating analog, digital, mixed-signal, and RF functionality. Business Challenge • Develop a large, next-generation SoC integrating analog, digital, mixed-signal, and RF functionality. Design Challenges • Ensure different portions ... » read more

Scaling Performance In AI Systems


Improving performance in AI designs involves the usual tradeoffs in power and performance, but achieving a good balance is becoming much more challenging. There is more data to process, new heterogeneous architectures to contend with, and much higher utilization rates. Andy Nightingale, vice president of product management and marketing at Arteris, talks about where the bottlenecks are, how to ... » read more

NoCs In 3D Space


A network on chip (NoC) has become an essential piece of technology that enables the complexity of chips to keep growing, but when designs go 3D, or when third-party chiplets become pervasive, it's not clear how NoCs will evolve or what the impact will be on chiplet architectures. A NoC enables data to move between heterogeneous computing elements, while at the same time minimizing the resou... » read more

Optimizing IC Designs For Real-World Use Cases


Semiconductor systems are becoming more focused on power, performance, and area for the primary scenarios they are likely to see in real-world applications, but increasingly at the expense of secondary tasks. This is happening at all levels of abstraction and all stages of the design flow. At the highest level, processors are being optimized to run a given set of software. RISC-V is one of t... » read more

Not All There: Heterogeneous Multiprocessor Design Tools


The design, implementation, and programming of multicore heterogeneous systems is becoming more common, often driven by the software workloads, but the tooling to help optimize the processors, interconnect, and memory are disjointed. Over the past few years, many tools have emerged that help with the definition and implementation of a single processor, optimized for a given set of software. ... » read more

Auto Cyberattacks Becoming More Widespread


As vehicles become smarter, more complex, and increasingly connected, they also become more prone to cyberattacks. The challenge now is to keep pace with hackers, who are continually devising new and innovative ways to attack both software and hardware in vehicles. Recent statistics bear this out. In 2022, there was a big spike in deep/dark web activity and incidents related to application p... » read more

Fast and Flexible FPGA-based NoC Hybrid Emulation


Researchers from RWTH Aachen University and Otto-von-Guericke Universitat Magdeburg have published a new technical paper titled "EmuNoC: Hybrid Emulation for Fast and Flexible Network-on-Chip Prototyping on FPGAs." Abstract: "Networks-on-Chips (NoCs) recently became widely used, from multi-core CPUs to edge-AI accelerators. Emulation on FPGAs promises to accelerate their RTL modeling co... » read more

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