I remember the days of the IDM (integrated device manufacturer). For me, it was RCA, where I worked for 15 years as the company changed from RCA to GE and then ultimately to Harris Semiconductor. It’s a bit of a cliché, but life was simpler then, from a customer point of view at least. RCA did it all. We designed all the IP, did the physical… Read More
Artificial Intelligence
ASIC and TSMC are the AI Chip Unsung Heroes
One of the more exciting design start market segments that we track is Artificial Intelligence related ASICs. With NVIDIA making billions upon billions of dollars repurposing GPUs as AI engines in the cloud, the Application Specific Integrated Circuit business was sure to follow. Google now has its Tensor Processing Unit, Intel… Read More
Deep Learning and Cloud Computing Make 7nm Real
The challenges of 7nm are well documented. Lithography artifacts create exploding design rule complexity, mask costs and cycle time. Noise and crosstalk get harder to deal with, as does timing closure. The types of applications that demand 7nm performance will often introduce HBM memory stacks and 2.5D packaging, and that creates… Read More
Design Data Intelligence
We have an urge to categorize companies, and when our limited perspective is of a company that helps with design, we categorize it as an EDA company. That was my view of Magillem, but I have commented before that my view is changing. I’m now more inclined to see them more as the design equivalent of a business intelligence organization… Read More
Synopsys discusses the challenges of embedded vision processing
Before the advent of convolutional neural networks (CNN), image processing was done with algorithms like HOG, SIFT and SURF. This kind of work was frequently done in data centers and server farms. To facilitate mobile and embedded processing a new class of processors was developed – the vision processor. In addition to doing a … Read More
Software Defined Networks (on Chip) – NetSpeed Systems and UltraSoC Team Up to Use Embedded Analytics to Enable Next Generation SoCs
NetSpeed Systems is known for their network-on-chip (NoC) IP that enables complex heterogeneous SoC architectures. NetSpeed IP supports both non-coherent and coherent memory and I/O schemes as well as configurable, customized last level cache optimization through their Orion, Gemini and Pegasus IP respectively. They are… Read More
DSP-Based Neural Nets
You may be under the impression that anything to do with neural nets necessarily runs on a GPU. After all, NVIDIA dominates a lot of what we hear in this area, and rightly so. In neural net training, their solutions are well established. However, GPUs tend to consume a lot of power and are not necessarily optimal in inference performance… Read More
Accelerating Accelerators
Accelerating compute-intensive software functions by moving them into hardware has a long history, stretching back (as far as I remember) to floating-point co-processors. Modern SoCs are stuffed with these applications, from signal processors, to graphics processors, codecs and many more functions. All of these accelerators… Read More
This is How We Autonomous
Some days it seems like the world is obsessed with autonomous vehicles. No one really understands why. Surveys tell us that consumers are both interested in and repelled by self-driving cars. What’s missing is the business model – the commercial reason for the existence of self-driving cars.
Today’s announced acquisition of … Read More
Magillem User Group Meeting
Magillem is hosting a user group meeting on October 26th at The Pad in Sunnyvale. User Group meetings are always educational; this one should be especially so for a number of reasons, not least of which is the keynote topic: Expert Systems for Experts.
REGISTER HERE for the meeting in Sunnyvale on October 26[SUP]th[/SUP] from 10:00am… Read More
Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding is Here