Picking The Right Processor


By Frank Schirrmeister In an embedded system, the sole connection point between the software and the hardware is the processor. Somewhere right now the effort to develop software for a complex System-on-Chip (SoC) is surpassing the effort of developing the chip itself. As I pointed out in my recent description of the Design West conference in San Jose, complex ecosystems of related content, to... » read more

Processor Subject To Change


By Ann Steffora Mutschler With power complexity driving sophisticated management techniques, SoC design engineering teams are turning to a new class of customizable processor architectures from ARM, CEVA, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Tensilica and others to take advantage of the best in power saving techniques. While these new architectures are novel approaches, the concepts are not especially new,... » read more

The Big Picture


Business is booming for the makers of processors. Intel posted its five consecutive record quarter, AMD turned a profit, Tensilica shipped its billionth DSP, ARM and MIPS are both reporting strong earnings. So what’s changed? There are several distinct trends driving this upbeat mood: The replacement cycle. After years of putting off purchases through a prolonged and deep downturn, com... » read more

The Enterprise Effect


By Pallab Chatterjee In the enterprise it’s all about speed and power—as in more speed and less power—and those changes are forcing shifts in the chip architectures as well as the processes used to develop those chips. At the Linley Data Center Conference the next generation of network control chips were discussed. The keys for the new networks are 10G data lanes to be used with 10G/4... » read more

ARM Vs. Intel


Simon Segars, ARM's executive vice president and general manager of the company's physical IP group, talks about the war with Intel and which markets it's likely to affect. [youtube vid=EISi5qpY77M] » read more

Performance Plus Lower Power


By Pallab Chatterjee Power and performance often have been seen as something of a tradeoff. Chipmakers focus on one or the other, or they extract a little improvement in both at each new process node. That way of thinking is changing, though. At the recent Linley processor conference, the central theme for both standalone and embedded processors was that architectures have to optimized for ... » read more

A New Reference For Low-Power Processors


By Pallab Chattejee Just how much power can you squeeze out of a processor without destroying performance? Ask IBM. The company introduced a new methodology for power and energy management on its multicore processor chips. The new PowerPC chip, the Power 7, has eight main processor cores each with its own L2 and L3 cache and two central memory controllers. The architecture for the design is... » read more

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