Always-On DSPs


There are tradeoffs between powering circuits down to save power and waking them up to respond to voice and visual commands. Prakash Madhvapathy, director of product marketing and product management at Cadence, talks about the best ways to deploy digital signal processors, why multiple DSPs are often better than just one, and what penalties there are for various approaches. » read more

Always-On Sub-Microwatt Spiking Neural Network Based on Spike-Driven Clock- and Power-Gating for an Ultra-Low-Power Intelligent Device


Abstract: "This paper presents a novel spiking neural network (SNN) classifier architecture for enabling always-on artificial intelligent (AI) functions, such as keyword spotting (KWS) and visual wake-up, in ultra-low-power internet-of-things (IoT) devices. Such always-on hardware tends to dominate the power efficiency of an IoT device and therefore it is paramount to minimize its power diss... » read more

An Event-Driven and Fully Synthesizable Architecture for Spiking Neural Networks


Abstract:  "The development of brain-inspired neuromorphic computing architectures as a paradigm for Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the edge is a candidate solution that can meet strict energy and cost reduction constraints in the Internet of Things (IoT) application areas. Toward this goal, we present μBrain: the first digital yet fully event-driven without clock architecture, with co-lo... » read more

A RISC-V ISA Extension For Ultra-Low Power IoT Wireless Signal Processing


This work presents an instruction-set extension to the open-source RISC-V ISA (RV32IM) dedicated to ultra-low power (ULP) software-defined wireless IoT transceivers. The custom instructions are tailored to the needs of 8/16/32-bit integer complex arithmetic typically required by quadrature modulations. The proposed extension occupies only 2 major opcodes and most instructions are designed to co... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Microsoft this week introduced IoT Plug and Play, a no-code toolkit for connecting Internet of Things devices to the cloud. The company touts it as a new modeling language to pump up the capabilities of IoT devices through the Microsoft Azure cloud service. The Azure IoT Device Catalog lists devices that support IoT Plug and Play, such as the STMicroelectronics SensorTile.bo... » read more

On-Chip Monitoring Of FinFETs


Stephen Crosher, CEO of Moortec, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss on-chip monitoring and its impact on power, security and reliability, including predictive maintenance. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What new problems are you seeing in design? Crosher: There are challenges emerging for companies working on advanced nodes, including scaling and trans... » read more

Ultra-Low Power Memory IPs Using Mentor coolSRAM-6T Technology


The use of embedded static random access memory (eSRAM) in complex ICs has significantly increased in the past three decades. This trend will continue with the growth of ICs designed for rapidly expanding markets such as automotive, virtual reality (VR) / augmented reality (AR), implantable medical devices, gaming, sensor hub, medical devices, wearable computing, data center, and artificial int... » read more

EEMBC Offers Benchmark for Bluetooth LE in IoT


The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium is introducing the IoTMark-BLE benchmark, for certifying the performance of devices using the Bluetooth Low Energy wireless protocol for Internet of Things applications. It is the first in the group’s IoT-Connect benchmark series. EEMBC also is preparing the ULPBench 2.0 standard, which will test the ultra-low-power capabilities of connected... » read more

Cryptography For ULP Devices


Soon virtually everything and everyone will be connected to the IoE in one fashion or another, and much of it will be wireless. To make it all work, these wireless, and low-power devices will need a new paradigm for handling cryptography. Ultra-low power devices have an interesting, and challenging set of metrics. There are, in general, two approaches that can work, with a variety of sub-sce... » read more

TSMC Tech Tour De Force


TSMC held the first of its three North American Tech Symposiums on April 7 in San Jose, with the other two coming up in Boston on April 14 and in Austin on April 16. As was mentioned previously here, the record fast ramp-time of the 20nm node was highlighted among other technological achievements. TSMC also released its March revenue report on April 10, and it shows a dramatic 49.8% increase in... » read more

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