How Mature Are Verification Methodologies?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss differences between hardware and software verification and changes and challenges facing the chip industry, with Larry Lapides, vice president of sales for Imperas Software; Mike Thompson, director of engineering for the verification task group at OpenHW; Paul Graykowski, technical marketing manager for Arteris IP; Shantanu Ganguly, vice president o... » read more

Costs of Static HW Partitioning on RISC-V


A new technical paper titled "Static Hardware Partitioning on RISC-V -- Shortcomings, Limitations, and Prospects" was published by researchers at Technical University of Applied Sciences (Regensburg, Germany) and Siemens AG (Corporate Research). Abstract "On embedded processors that are increasingly equipped with multiple CPU cores, static hardware partitioning is an established means of c... » read more

Processor Design Automation To Drive Innovation And Foster Differentiation


With semiconductor scaling no longer being an option in most situations, optimization means customizing the processor for your specific application. With the right approach and right tools, processor design automation can enable innovation and differentiation. One way of achieving this is to create an application-specific processor by owning the design. To do this efficiently, manual efforts sh... » read more

Implementing Cryptographic Algorithms for the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture in Two Cases


This new technical paper titled "Symmetric Cryptography on RISC-V: Performance Evaluation of Standardized Algorithms" was published by researchers at Intel, North Arizona University and Google, with partial funding from U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Abstract "The ever-increasing need for securing computing systems using cryptographic algorithms is spurring interest in the efficient i... » read more

Low Power HW Accelerator for FP16 Matrix Multiplications For Tight Integration Within RISC-V Cores


This new technical paper titled "RedMulE: A Compact FP16 Matrix-Multiplication Accelerator for Adaptive Deep Learning on RISC-V-Based Ultra-Low-Power SoCs" was published by researchers at University of Bologna and ETH Zurich. According to their abstract: "One of the key stumbling stones is the need for parallel floating-point operations, which are considered unaffordable on sub-100 mW extre... » read more

Customizing Processors


The design, verification, and implementation of a processor is the core competence of some companies, but others just want to whip up a small processor as quickly and cheaply as possible. What tools and options exist? Processors range from very small, simple cores that are deeply embedded into products to those operating at the highest possible clock speeds and throughputs in data centers. I... » read more

Bespoke Silicon Redefines Custom ASICs


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss bespoke silicon and what's driving that customization with Kam Kittrell, vice president of product management in the Digital & Signoff group at Cadence; Rupert Baines, chief marketing officer at Codasip; Kevin McDermott, vice president of marketing at Imperas; Mo Faisal, CEO of Movellus; Ankur Gupta, vice president and general manager of Siemens... » read more

DAC 2022: Is It Too Risky Not To Adopt RISC-V?


I was fortunate enough to attend the 59th Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco. Aside from the Covid closure in 2020 I’ve been going to DAC since 1995. Many people, including me, arrived to San Francisco with a bit of trepidation. After all, 58th DAC had low attendance and it was only about 7 months ago. What was the DAC 2022 conference going to be like? How would Covid affec... » read more

ISA Extension For Low-Precision NN Training On RISC-V Cores


New technical paper titled "MiniFloat-NN and ExSdotp: An ISA Extension and a Modular Open Hardware Unit for Low-Precision Training on RISC-V cores" from researchers at IIS, ETH Zurich; DEI, University of Bologna; and Axelera AI. Abstract "Low-precision formats have recently driven major breakthroughs in neural network (NN) training and inference by reducing the memory footprint of the N... » read more

Technical Paper Round-Up: July 5


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=36 /] Semiconductor Engineering is in the process of building this library of research papers. Please send suggestions (via comments section below) for what else you’d like us to incorporate. If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a good fit for... » read more

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