Speeding Up AI With Vector Instructions


A search is underway across the industry to find the best way to speed up machine learning applications, and optimizing hardware for vector instructions is gaining traction as a key element in that effort. Vector instructions are a class of instructions that enable parallel processing of data sets. An entire array of integers or floating point numbers is processed in a single operation, elim... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A AMD will acquire Xilinx for $35 billion in an all-stock deal. "Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our data center business and enable us to pursue a broader customer base across more markets,” said Victor Peng, Xilinx president and CEO. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2021. The acquisition of the programmable logic giant will leave only a few purepla... » read more

Using Verification Data More Effectively


Verification is producing so much data from complex designs that engineering teams need to decide what to keep, how long to keep it, and what they can learn from that data for future projects. Files range from hundreds of megabytes to hundreds of gigabytes, depending on the type of verification task, but the real value may not be obvious unless AI/machine learning algorithms are applied to a... » read more

Solving CSD Verification Challenges


To tackle power consumption and slow execution, modern computational storage devices (CSD) seek to reduce data movement by including a small processing element next to the CSD (figure 1). The data request from the host is executed locally by the processing element, data is locally manipulated, and the result sent back to the host. Much less data is exchanged between storage and host, thus savin... » read more

Is Hardware-Assisted Verification Avoidable?


Emulation is emerging as the tool of choice for complex and large designs, but companies that swap from simulation to emulation increasingly recognize this is not an easy transition. It requires money, time, and effort, and even then not everyone gets it right. Still, there are significant benefits to moving from simulation to emulation, providing these systems can be utilized efficiently en... » read more

Virtual Verification Of Computational Storage Devices


Over recent years, there has been a move to replace hard-disk drive (HDD) storage with solid-state drive (SSD) storage. SDDs are faster, contain no moving parts that can fail or be affected by environmental hazards, and the cost of SSDs has been dropping each year. Unfortunately, the verification of an SSD is quite complex. In particular because of hyperscale datacenter enterprise and client-dr... » read more

Are Today’s MEMS Gyros “Good Enough”?


The gyroscope market is heating up, fueled by increasingly autonomous vehicles, robots, and industrial equipment, all of which are demanding greater precision and ever-smaller devices. Gyroscopes historically have been a staple in navigation for years. However, classic designs are macro-mechanical, and high-performance units can be very expensive. For lower-performance applications, micro-el... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 28


Synopsys' Jacob Wilson provides some tips for how to prepare for the upcoming ISO SAE 21434 cybersecurity standard for road vehicles, starting with a security plan and understanding of risk levels. Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out Arm's first face-to-face wafer-bonded design, why it might be desirable, and some important aspects of how the proof-of-concept was developed. In a video, Men... » read more

Performance and Power Tradeoffs At 7/5nm


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power optimization with Oliver King, CTO at Moortec; João Geada, chief technologist at Ansys; Dino Toffolon, senior vice president of engineering at Synopsys; Bryan Bowyer, director of engineering at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Kiran Burli, senior director of marketing for Arm's Physical Design Group; Kam Kittrell, senior product management group d... » read more

Regaining The Edge In U.S. Chip Manufacturing


The United States is developing new strategies to prevent it from falling further behind Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps even China in semiconductor manufacturing, as trade tensions and national security concerns continue to grow. For years, the U.S. has been a leader in the development of new chip products like GPUs and microprocessors. But from a chip manufacturing standpoint, the U.S. is losin... » read more

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