Chip Industry Week In Review


BAE Systems and GlobalFoundries are teaming up to strengthen the supply of chips for national security programs, aligning technology roadmaps and collaborating on innovation and manufacturing. Focus areas include advanced packaging, GaN-on-silicon chips, silicon photonics, and advanced technology process development. Onsemi plans to build a $2 billion silicon carbide production plant in the ... » read more

Rowhammer Bit Flips On A High-End RISC-V CPU (ETH Zurich)


A new technical paper titled "RISC-H: Rowhammer Attacks on RISC-V" was published by researchers at ETH Zurich.  RISC-H will be presented at DRAMSec (co-located with ISCA 2024) Abstract: "The first high-end RISC-V CPU with DDR4 support has been released just a few months ago. There are currently no Rowhammer studies on RISC-V devices and it is unclear whether it is possible to compromise ... » read more

When To Expect Domain-Specific AI Chips


The chip industry is moving toward domain-specific computation, while artificial intelligence (AI) is moving in the opposite direction, creating a gap that could force significant changes in how chips and systems are architected in the future. Behind this split is the amount of time it takes to design hardware and software. In the 18 months since ChatGPT was launched on the world, there has ... » read more

Efficient TNN Inference on RISC-V Processing Cores With Minimal HW Overhead


A new technical paper titled "xTern: Energy-Efficient Ternary Neural Network Inference on RISC-V-Based Edge Systems" was published by researchers at ETH Zurich and Universita di Bologna. Abstract "Ternary neural networks (TNNs) offer a superior accuracy-energy trade-off compared to binary neural networks. However, until now, they have required specialized accelerators to realize their effic... » read more

Using Formal Verification To Evaluate The HW Reliability Of A RISC-V Ibex Core In The Presence Of Soft Errors


A technical paper titled “Using Formal Verification to Evaluate Single Event Upsets in a RISC-V Core” was published by researchers at University of Southampton. Abstract: "Reliability has been a major concern in embedded systems. Higher transistor density and lower voltage supply increase the vulnerability of embedded systems to soft errors. A Single Event Upset (SEU), which is also calle... » read more

RISC-V Heralds New Era Of Cooperation


RISC-V is paving the way for open source to become accepted within the hardware community, creating a level of industry collaboration never seen in the past, while revitalizing the connection between academia and industry. The big question is whether this arrangement is just a placeholder while the industry re-learns how to develop processors, or whether this processor architecture is someth... » read more

Competitive Open-Source EDA Tools


A technical paper titled “Basilisk: Achieving Competitive Performance with Open EDA Tools on an Open-Source Linux-Capable RISC-V SoC” was published by researchers at ETH Zurich and University of Bologna. Abstract: "We introduce Basilisk, an optimized application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) implementation and design flow building on the end-to-end open-source Iguana system-on-chip (... » read more

Comparing Leakage Detection Methods On RISC-V Cores (Radboud University)


A technical paper titled “Plan your defense: A comparative analysis of leakage detection methods on RISC-V cores” was published by researchers at Radboud University. Abstract: "Hardening microprocessors against side-channel attacks is a critical aspect of ensuring their security. A key step in this process is identifying and mitigating “leaky” hardware modules, which inadvertently lea... » read more

General-Purpose 32-bit RISC-V MCU Core Expands Design Freedom


The microcontroller sector is evolving in an exciting direction by providing designers with a growing menu of choices tailored to their performance and power requirements. Unlike the classic 1990s debate between the merits of x86 (CISC) and PowerPC (RISC) CPU architectures, there is plenty of room under the MCU tent for competing – and complementary – processor cores. The common denominator... » read more

Exploring The Security Framework Of RISC-V Architecture In Modern SoCs


In the rapidly evolving world of technology, system-on-chip (SoC) designs have become a cornerstone for various applications, from automotive and mobile devices to data centers. These complex systems integrate multiple processors, a multi-level cache hierarchy, and various subsystems that share memory and system resources. However, this open access to shared memory and resources introduces pote... » read more

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