Low-Power IC Design Without Compromise


In the process of creating ICs, the digital implementation stage is focused on meeting the performance, power, and area (PPA) targets defined for the design. Traditionally, when talking about PPA metrics, “performance” has been the primary focus, with power and area recovered where possible, after meeting timing. But as designs have moved to smaller, more advanced process nodes, and as s... » read more

How Low Can You Go? Pushing The Limits Of Transistors


Deep low voltage enablement of embedded memories and logic libraries to achieve extreme low power: Rising demand for cutting-edge mobile, IoT, and wearable devices, along with high compute demands for AI and 5G/6G communications, has driven the need for lower power systems-on-chip (SoCs). This is not only a concern for a device’s power consumption when active (dynamic power), but also when... » read more

Beyond Human Reach: Meeting Design Targets Faster With AI-Driven Optimization


The implementation flow for semiconductor devices is all about optimizing for power, performance, area (PPA), or some combination of these attributes. The history of this flow in electronic design automation (EDA) tools is all about adding more automation, tightening iterative loops, and reducing the number of iterations. The goal is converging to the PPA targets faster while using fewer resour... » read more

How Low Can You Go? Pushing The Limits Of Transistors


Rising demand for cutting-edge mobile, IoT, and wearable devices, along with high compute demands for AI and 5G/6G communications, has driven the need for lower power systems-on-chip (SoCs). This is not only a concern for a device’s power consumption when active (dynamic power), but also when the device is not active (leakage power). This highly competitive industry provides significant rewar... » read more

A Power-First Approach


It is becoming evidently clear that heat will be the limiter for the future of semiconductors. Already, large percentages of a chip are dark at any time, because if everything operated at the same time the amount of heat generated would exceed the ability of the chip and package to dissipate that energy. If we now start to contemplate stacking dies, where the ability to extract heat remains con... » read more

How To Compare Chips


Traditional metrics for semiconductors are becoming much less meaningful in the most advanced designs. The number of transistors packed into a square centimeter only matters if they can be utilized, and performance per watt is irrelevant if sufficient power cannot be delivered to all of the transistors. The consensus across the chip industry is that the cost per transistor is rising at each ... » read more

Using AI To Speed Up Edge Computing


AI is being designed into a growing number of chips and systems at the edge, where it is being used to speed up the processing of massive amounts of data, and to reduce power by partitioning and prioritization. That, in turn, allows systems to act upon that data more rapidly. Processing data at the edge rather than in the cloud provides a number of well-documented benefits. Because the physi... » read more

eFPGAs Bring A 10X Advantage In Power And Cost


eFPGA LUTs will out-ship FPGA LUTs at some point in the near future because of the advantages of reconfigurable logic being built into the chip: cost reduction, lower power, and improved performance. Many systems use FPGAs because they are more efficient than processors for parallel processing and can be programmed with application specific co-processors or accelerators typically found in da... » read more

Risks Rise As Robotic Surgery Goes Mainstream


As robotic-assisted surgery moves into the mainstream, so do concerns about security breaches, latency, and system performance. In the operating room, every second is critical, and technology failures or delays can be life-threatening. Robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) has around for a couple decades, but it is becoming more prevalent and significantly more complex. The technology often include... » read more

Why Hardware-Dependent Software Is So Critical


Hardware and software are two sides of the same coin, but they often live in different worlds. In the past, hardware and software rarely were designed together, and many companies and products failed because the total solution was unable to deliver. The big question is whether the industry has learned anything since then. At the very least, there is widespread recognition that hardware-depen... » read more

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