One challenge with security in systems is to ensure that there are not backdoors, either accidentally or maliciously inserted. Intel, ARM and others have various forms of trusted execution technology. Under the hood these are implemented by dividing the design into two parts, normal and secure, and implementing them with physical… Read More
Author: Paul McLellan
Patents: Who to Sue?
In an interview (probably $) with the Wall Street Journal, Eric Schmidt, the chairman (and ex-CEO) of Google, said:“The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they’ve actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They’re not sending bombs at each other. … It’s extremely curious… Read More
SystemC vs C++ for High Level Synthesis
One of the decisions that needs to be made when using high-level synthesis (HLS) in general and Catapult in particular is what language to use as input. The choice is C++ or SystemC. Of course at some level SystemC is C++ with added libraries and templates, but in fact the semantics of the two languages end up being very different.
The… Read More
ST Microelectronics: Strategic Options
ST Microelectronics announced yesterday that it would have a conference call on December 10th to announce its strategy going forward. ST has been struggling the last couple of years, with revenues down year to year. From 2010-2012 (the last an estimate of course) it did $10.3B, $9.6B and $8.4B so it has shrunk nearly 20% in 3 years.… Read More
Accelera Technical Excellence Award
The Accellera Systems Initiative, most well-known for driving the standardization of various aspects of Verilog and SystemVerilog before handing the standards off to the IEEE, has announced that nominations are open for the 2013 Technical Excellence Award. This recognizes outstanding contributions in the creation of EDA… Read More
Challenges of Implementing LTE
LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the true 4G standard for cellular and, over time, wireless internet. In fact it is several different standards with different levels of performance. LTE will eventually be the only technology used in cellular, voice will simply be Voice-over-IP (VoIP, the same technology that companies like Skype… Read More
Sequential Power Optimization
Calypto has an interesting webinar coming up about Minimizing RTL Power Through Sequential Analysis. It is next Tuesday December 4th at 11am.
Insert standard paragraph about how power is the new timing, everyone worries about power, battery life in smartphones, half-empty datacenters.
You probably already know about clock… Read More
Anyone Can Build a Phone
Today’s Dilbert cartoon is about how anybody can build a smart phone. As if it was a technical problem these days. But back in the mid-90s it really was. All the contract manufacturers like Solectron and others figured that since they could build a PC they could build a phone. It turned out that building radios was really hard.… Read More
Apache on Signal Integrity
Matt Elmore has a two-part blog about the growing complexity of signal integrity analysis, both on the chip itself and the increasingly complex analysis required to make sure that signals (and power) get in and out of the chip from the board cleanly, especially to memory, which requires simultaneous analysis of chip-package-system… Read More
EDS Fair: Dateline Yohohama
Electronic Design and Solutions Fair (EDSF) was held in Yokohama Japan from Wednesday to Friday last week. It was held at the Pacifico Hotel, somewhere I have stayed several times, not far from the Yokohama branch of Hard Rock Cafe and, what used to be at least, the biggest ferris-wheel in the world.
Atrenta was one of the many companies… Read More
cHBM for AI: Capabilities, Challenges, and Opportunities