Open-Source RISC-V Hardware And Security


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Helena Handschuh, a Rambus fellow; Richard Newell, senior principal product architect at Microsemi, a Microchip Company; and Joseph Kiniry, principal scientist at Galois. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. (L-R) Joseph Kiniry, Helena Handschuh and Richard Newell. SE: Is open-source hardware more secure, or does it just open up vulnera... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


RISC-V Western Digital announced big plans for RISC-V with a new open source RISC-V core, an open standard initiative for cache coherent memory over a network, and an open source RISC-V instruction set simulator. The SweRV Core features a 2-way superscalar design with a 32-bit, 9 stage pipeline core. It has clock speeds of up to 1.8Ghz on a 28mm CMOS process technology and will be used in vari... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP UltraSoC debuted functional safety-focused Lockstep Monitor, a set of configurable IP blocks that are protocol aware and can be used to cross-check outputs, bus transactions, code execution, and register states between two or more redundant systems. It supports all common lockstep / redundancy architectures, including full dual-redundant lockstep, split/lock, master/checker, and... » read more

Looking Beyond The CPU


CPUs no longer deliver the same kind of of performance improvements as in the past, raising questions across the industry about what comes next. The growth in processing power delivered by a single CPU core began stalling out at the beginning of the decade, when power-related issues such as heat and noise forced processor companies to add more cores rather than pushing up the clock frequency... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A SMIT Holdings acquired S2C, a provider of FPGA prototyping hardware and software as well as interfaces and accessories, for $19 million, plus up to US$2 million in milestone based payments to the key management team. S2C was founded in 2003. SMIT, based in Hong Kong, makes pay TV broadcasting access and mobile point-of-sale payment systems for the Chinese market. Tools & IP Syn... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A GlobalFoundries formed Avera Semiconductor, a wholly-owned subsidiary focused on custom ASIC designs. While Avera will use its relationship with GF for 14/12nm and more mature technologies, it has a foundry partnership lined up for 7nm. The new company's IP portfolio includes high-speed SerDes, high-performance embedded TCAMs, ARM cores and performance and density-optimized embedded SR... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 31


Mentor's Joe Hupcey III digs into handling memories effectively with formal through abstraction and the easiest ways to address memory-related inconclusive results. Cadence's Paul McLellan explains DARPA's CHIPS program that aims to lower semiconductor design costs through chiplet-based designs, the current status of the work, and what the next steps will be. Synopsys' Sangeeta Kulkarni c... » read more

The Race To Design Larger Systems


For more than a decade, tools vendors and design houses have been talking about leveraging their tools and expertise to help design systems of systems. They're finally getting their chance. The basic idea behind this strategy has always been that issues inside any electronic system—performance, power, signal integrity, area—have all been dealt all the way down to the sub-atomic level in ... » read more

What Makes A Good AI Accelerator


The rapid growth and dynamic nature of AI and machine learning algorithms is sparking a rush to develop accelerators that can be optimized for different types of data. Where one general-purpose processor was considered sufficient in the past, there are now dozens vying for a slice of the market. As with any optimized system, architecting an accelerator — which is now the main processing en... » read more

RISC-V: More Than a Core


The open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) is attracting a lot of attention across the semiconductor industry, but its long-term success will depend on levels of cooperation never seen before in the semiconductor industry. The big question now is how committed the industry is to RISC-V's success. The real value that RISC-V brings is the promise of an ecosystem and the opportun... » read more

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