Selected I-III-VI2 Semiconductors: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications (Université de Lorraine)


A technical paper titled “Selected I-III-VI2 Semiconductors: Synthesis, Properties and Applications in Photovoltaic Cells” was published by researchers at Université de Lorraine, CNRS. Abstract: "I–III–VI2 group quantum dots (QDs) have attracted high attention in photoelectronic conversion applications, especially for QD-sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs). This group of... » read more

FPGAs: Automated Framework For Architecture-Space Exploration of Approximate Accelerators


A technical paper titled "autoXFPGAs: An End-to-End Automated Exploration Framework for Approximate Accelerators in FPGA-Based Systems" was published (preprint) by researchers at TU Wien, Brno University of Technology, and NYUAD. Abstract "Generation and exploration of approximate circuits and accelerators has been a prominent research domain exploring energy-efficiency and/or performance... » read more

Customizing Processors


The design, verification, and implementation of a processor is the core competence of some companies, but others just want to whip up a small processor as quickly and cheaply as possible. What tools and options exist? Processors range from very small, simple cores that are deeply embedded into products to those operating at the highest possible clock speeds and throughputs in data centers. I... » read more

High-Level Synthesis For RISC-V


High-quality RISC-V implementations are becoming more numerous, but it is the extensibility of the architecture that is driving a lot of design activity. The challenge is designing and implementing custom processors without having to re-implement them every time at the register transfer level (RTL). There are two types of high-level synthesis (HLS) that need to be considered. The first is ge... » read more

The Case For FPGA Equivalence Checking


Formal Equivalence Checking (EC) has become a standard part of the ASIC development flow, replacing almost all gate level simulation with a rigorous consistency check between pre- and post-synthesized code. In the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) space, EC is still a relatively new concept, but is rapidly becoming important given the large devices being employed today. For the largest FP... » read more

Automation And Fault Simulation Of Safety-Critical FPGA Designs


Functional safety is a major challenge for field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other semiconductor designs. Safety requirements go beyond traditional verification, which focuses on design bugs. Chips in safety-critical applications must be able to handle a variety of faults from sources such as temperature and power extremes, device aging, radiation, ionization and component failures. Ap... » read more

Logic Synthesis Basics For FPGA


In the early days of digital design, all circuits were designed manually. You would draw K-map, optimize the logic and draw the schematics. If you remember, we all did many logic optimization exercises back in college. It was time consuming and very error prone. This works fine for designs with a few hundred gates, but as the designs get larger and larger this became non-feasible. Design... » read more

3 Types Of AI Hardware


As AI chips become more pervasive, three primary approaches are moving to the forefront. Bradley Geden, director of product marketing at Synopsys, looks at how to take advantage of repeatability, what the different flavors look like, the difference between flat and hierarchical design, and what impact black-box arrays have on programmability. » read more

Timing Closure At 7/5nm


Mansour Amirfathi, director of application engineering at Synopsys, examines how to determine if assumptions about design are correct, how many cycles are needed for a particular operation and why this is so complicated, and what happens if signals get out of phase. » read more

Automotive Chip Design Workflow


Stewart Williams, senior technical marketing manager at Synopsys, talks about the consolidation of chips in a vehicle and the impact of 7/5nm on automotive SoC design, how to trade off power, performance, area and reliability, and how ISO 26262 impacts those variables. » read more

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