Utilizing Computational Memory


For systems to become faster and consume less power, they must stop wasting the power required to move data around and start adding processing near memory. This approach has been proven, and products are entering the marketplace designed to fill a number of roles. Processing near memory, also known as computational memory, has been hiding in the shadows for more than a decade. Ever since the... » read more

Solving The Memory Bottleneck


Chipmakers are scrambling to solve the bottleneck between processor and memory, and they are turning out new designs based on different architectures at a rate no one would have anticipated even several months ago. At issue is how to boost performance in systems, particularly those at the edge, where huge amounts of data need to be processed locally or regionally. The traditional approach ha... » read more

Trading Off Power And Performance Earlier In Designs


Optimizing performance, power and reliability in consumer electronics is an engineering feat that involves a series of tradeoffs based on gathering as much data about the use cases in which a design will operate. Approaches vary widely by market, by domain expertise, and by the established methodologies and perspective of the design teams. As a result, one team may opt for a leading-edge des... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 16


Faster CNN training Researchers at North Carolina State University developed a technique that reduces training time for deep learning networks by more than 60% without sacrificing accuracy. Convolutional neural networks (CNN) divide images into blocks, which are then run through a series of computational filters. In training, this needs to be repeated for the thousands to millions of images... » read more

3D NAND Metrology Challenges Growing


3D NAND vendors face several challenges to scale their devices to the next level, but one manufacturing technology stands out as much more difficult at each turn—metrology. Metrology, the art of measuring and characterizing structures, is used to pinpoint problems and ensure yields for all chip types. In the case of 3D NAND, the metrology tools are becoming more expensive at each iteration... » read more

Accelerate SSD Software Development And System Validation


The amount of data coming at us or that we produce ourselves in our daily lives continues to grow exponentially. It’s become the norm to stream movies and TV series from Netflix, as well as upload our own videos on YouTube. On top of this, a major shift in automotive (ADAS, autonomous driving) and surveillance are boosting the amount of data exchange that is happening every second. With th... » read more

Compute And AI In Next-Generation SSD Designs


Over the last 40 years digital storage has advanced at an amazing rate. Because it operates out of sight digital storage tends to be taken for granted, but today there is more storage capacity in the devices in our pockets than what existed in mainframe computers 30 years ago. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) this trend will continue and the results will be nothing less than astoun... » read more

Etch Techniques for Next-Generation Storage-Class Memory


Chipmakers make abundant use of two very different functional classes of memory in their products. For operational use (main/primary memory) where speed is critical, DRAM and SRAM are employed, whereas for long-term storage, flash memory – in particular NAND – provides the high capacity at low cost needed. For both classes, efforts to improve speed, capacity, and power usage are ongoing. To... » read more

Mentor TLC NAND Softmodel Soft-Bit Error Injection


Designing SSD controllers targeting NAND flash as the storage media requires some heavy lifting when it comes to dealing with the soft-errors that the flash will eventually produce. This paper will look at a method to simplify the design and verification required. We model these soft-bit behaviors with the Veloce emulator in a virtual setup, which reduces the time to market for an SSD. To r... » read more

Predictions: Manufacturing, Devices And Companies


Some predictions are just wishful thinking, but most of these are a lot more thoughtful. They project what needs to happen for various markets or products to become successful. Those far reaching predictions may not fully happen within 2018, but we give everyone the chance to note the progress made towards their predictions at the end of the year. (See Reflection On 2017: Design And EDA and Man... » read more

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