Power Is Limiting Machine Learning Deployments


The total amount of power consumed for machine learning tasks is staggering. Until a few years ago we did not have computers powerful enough to run many of the algorithms, but the repurposing of the GPU gave the industry the horsepower that it needed. The problem is that the GPU is not well suited to the task, and most of the power consumed is waste. While machine learning has provided many ... » read more

Taking EDA To The Cloud


By now, virtually everyone knows about the “cloud”—that amorphous delivery of computing services over the Internet. Servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, intelligence, and more are all on offer. Clouds may be private and limited to a single organization (enterprise clouds), be available to many organizations (public cloud), or a combination of both (hybrid cloud). ... » read more

Hybrid Emulation Takes Center Stage


From mobile to networking to AI applications, system complexity shows no sign of slowing. These designs, which may contain multiple billion gates, must be validated, verified and tested, and it’s no longer possible to just throw the whole thing in a hardware emulator. For some time, emulation, FPGA-based prototyping, and virtual environments such as simulators have given design and verific... » read more

Konica Minolta Proves C++ Level Signoff Possibilities Using Catapult HLS Platform


A team’s ultimate goal is to move verification up to the C++ level in order to minimize the time spent in RTL verification and to achieve C++ signoff. A team at Konica Minolta® has been using the Catapult HLS Platform for many years to dramatically improve their productivity by coding at the C++ level and using the platform to generate RTL. They recently evaluated the high-level verification... » read more

Cybersecurity And Functional Safety: The Case For Embedded Analytics


From advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to a new generation of robots and medical systems, we are seeing an explosion in the development of cyber-physical systems. Because these systems use advanced software to interact with the physical world, security and safety are paramount concerns. These issues are reflected in many industries by the use of safety and security standards based on a ... » read more

Using Memory Differently To Boost Speed


Boosting memory performance to handle a rising flood of data is driving chipmakers to explore new memory types and different ways of using existing memory, but it also is creating some complex new challenges. For most of the semiconductor design industry, memory has been a non-issue for the past couple of decades. The main concerns were price and size, but memory makers have been more than a... » read more

Blog Review: July 17


Mentor's John McMillan takes a look at the three general classes that have been established by IPC-2221B to reflect progressive increases in sophistication, functional performance requirements, and testing/inspection frequency for PCBs. Synopsys' Dinesh Siwal and Thenmozhy Kaliyamurthy point out the new features and improvements in DisplayPort 2.0, including greater speeds, better power effi... » read more

Breaking Down The Debug Process


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss debugging complex SoCs with Randy Fish, vice president of strategic accounts and partnerships for UltraSoC; Larry Melling, product management director for Cadence; Mark Olen, senior product marketing manager for Mentor, a Siemens Business; and Dominik Strasser, vice president of engineering for OneSpin Solutions. Part one can be found here. What fol... » read more

Empowering UPF Commands With Effective Elements Lists


The Unified Power Format (UPF) is intended for power management, power aware verification, and low power implementation. The more we explore the inherent features of UPF commands and options, and comprehend their interrelation, the more we become accurate, productive, and consistent in developing UPF for our intended purposes. Although the UPF is very well defined through the IEEE 1801 LRM, ... » read more

Low-Power Design Becomes Even More Complex


Throughout the SoC design flow, there has been a tremendous amount of research done to ease the pain of managing a long list of power-related issues. And while headway has been made, the addition of new application areas such as AI/ML/DL, automotive and IoT has raised as many new problems as have been solved. The challenges are particularly acute at leading-edge nodes where devices are power... » read more

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