AI Based Software Designing AI Based Hardware – Autonomous Automotive SoC Platform

AI Based Software Designing AI Based Hardware – Autonomous Automotive SoC Platform
by Mitch Heins on 10-10-2017 at 12:00 pm


For those of you who missed the NetSpeed Systems, Imagination Technologies webinar, “Alexa, can you help me build a better SoC”, you’ll be happy to hear that the session was recorded and can still be viewed (see link at the bottom of this page). I’ll warn you now however, that this was a high-bandwidth session packed with information,… Read More


Presto Engineering – Outsourced Secure Provisioning – Even Their Secrets Have Secrets

Presto Engineering – Outsourced Secure Provisioning – Even Their Secrets Have Secrets
by Mitch Heins on 10-05-2017 at 12:00 pm

When I first heard about Presto Engineering I was enamored by a statement on their web site that claimed that one of their secured solutions included, “The ability to incorporate your secrets without knowing them”. If Mr. Spock would have been in the room his eyebrow would have certainly raised. Indeed, what does that statement … Read More


Photonics Summit Delivers High-Bandwidth Discussion on State of Silicon Photonics

Photonics Summit Delivers High-Bandwidth Discussion on State of Silicon Photonics
by Mitch Heins on 10-03-2017 at 12:00 pm

On September 6, 2017, Cadence Design Systems, Lumerical Solutions and PhoeniX Software hosted their second Photonics Summit. As with last year’s summit, this was a two-day event, with the first day including in a myriad of photonics presentations and the second day being a hands-on workshop. The hands-on workshop taught attendees… Read More


CDNLive Boston Keynote Address Highlights Emergence of Silicon Photonics

CDNLive Boston Keynote Address Highlights Emergence of Silicon Photonics
by Mitch Heins on 09-27-2017 at 7:00 am

I had the pleasure of being able to attend the CDNLive event held in the Boston, MA area last month and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Cadence highlighted Silicon Photonics as one of its Keynote topics. MIT Professor Duane Boning gave an excellent overview of the current state of silicon photonics and why he believes it is time… Read More


Intrinsix Fields Ultra-Low Power Security IP for the IoT Market

Intrinsix Fields Ultra-Low Power Security IP for the IoT Market
by Mitch Heins on 09-21-2017 at 7:00 pm

As the Internet-of-Things (IoT) market continues to grow, the industry is coming to grips with the need to secure their IoT systems across the entire spectrum of IoT devices (edge, gateway, and cloud). One need only look back to the 2016 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that caused internet outages for major portions… Read More


Open Silicon Delivers Silicon-Verified HBM2 IP-Subsystem on TSMC 16nm FF+

Open Silicon Delivers Silicon-Verified HBM2 IP-Subsystem on TSMC 16nm FF+
by Mitch Heins on 09-20-2017 at 12:00 pm

Open Silicon hosted a webinar today focusing on their High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) IP-subsystem product offering. Their IP-subsystem is based on the HBM2 standard and includes blocks for the memory controller, PHY and high-speed I/Os, all targeted to TSMC 16nm FF+ process. The IP-subsystem supports the full HBM2 standard with… Read More


IoT SoCs Demand Good Data Management and Design Collaboration

IoT SoCs Demand Good Data Management and Design Collaboration
by Mitch Heins on 09-20-2017 at 12:00 pm

Design data management has always been important. Board designers have known this for decades as they had to have ways to keep all their discreet components organized and understood. Sourcing components is not easy as it means hours of reading and reviewing specifications, finding reliable sourcing partners and understanding… Read More


High-Level Synthesis for Automotive SoCs

High-Level Synthesis for Automotive SoCs
by Mitch Heins on 09-15-2017 at 7:00 am

Some of the world’s most complex Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) are being developed for automotive applications. These SoCs have heterogeneous architectures with a variety of processors and accelerators that do real-time image processing for assisted and autonomous driving applications. The Bosch Visiontec team, in Sophia Antipolis,… Read More


Webinar Preview: Alexa, can you help me build a better SoC?

Webinar Preview: Alexa, can you help me build a better SoC?
by Mitch Heins on 09-13-2017 at 7:00 am

Nothing is pushing complexity in system-on-chips (SoCs) designs like the drive (no pun intended) to make autonomous vehicles a widespread reality. Autonomous vehicle systems require heterogeneous architectures with reliable, efficient communications between CPU clusters, vision processing accelerators, storage and… Read More


Fusing CMOS IC and MEMS Design for IoT Edge Devices

Fusing CMOS IC and MEMS Design for IoT Edge Devices
by Mitch Heins on 09-11-2017 at 12:00 pm


In my 34 years in IC and EDA, it never ceases to amaze me as to how ingenious designers can be with what is given them. Mentor, a Siemens business, has released a wonderful white paper that is proof of this yet again. The white paper steps through how one of their customers, MEMSIC, used the Tanner tool suite to develop a combination CMOS… Read More