It is nice to see an emerging market successfully emerge for a change. With embedded FPGAs we are way past test chips and are now seeing tape-outs and silicon in a variety of applications. I’m not sure what the current market estimate of eFPGA is just yet but they align nicely with the $30B+ micro controller market. Market studies have… Read More
CEO Interview: Vincent Markus of Menta
What is Menta all about?
Menta was founded to add hardware-programmability within SoCs. We deliver FPGAs in hard IP form that can be readily embedded within an SoC to make certain hardware functions reconfigurable at-will, post-production. This enables customers to dynamically adapt to evolving standards, perform security… Read More
What’s better than silicon-proven IP? Lab bench-proven!
The SoC industry depends upon the availability of validated IP. SoC designs require a huge investment, and assume the external IP that is licensed from outside parties satisfies all functional and electrical specifications. To support that requirement, IP providers typically pursue a strategy to demonstrate their designs… Read More
Power and Performance Optimization for Embedded FPGA’s
Last month, I made a “no-brainer” forecast that 2017 would be the year in which embedded FPGA (eFPGA) IP would emerge as a key differentiator for new SoC designs (link to the earlier article here).
The fusion of several technical and market factors are motivating design teams to incorporate programmable logic functionality… Read More
DARPA Flex Logix and TSMC!
When I first saw emerging semiconductor IP company Flex Logix actively involved with TSMC I knew something big was coming and boy was I right. DARPA announced today that an agreement is in place with Flex Logix to develop EFLX eFPGA technology on TSMC 16FFC for use by companies or Government agencies designing chips for the US Government.… Read More
The Year of the eFPGA
The start of the new year is typically a time for annual predictions. Prognostications are especially difficult in our industry, due to the increasing difficulty in Moore’s Law technology scaling and greater design complexity challenges. There is one sure prediction, however — this year will see the emergence … Read More
Bringing the Semiconductor IP Community Together!
Next week is the first REUSE Semiconductor IP Tradeshow and Conference at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. The presentation abstracts are up now and there are a few I want to highlight as they are companies that we work with on SemiWiki.… Read More
One chip and the MCU variant challenge disappears
Merchant microcontrollers are usually made available in a wide range of variants based on one architecture with different peripheral payloads and packaging options. A couple of companies, notably Cypress with their PSoC families and Silicon Labs with the EFM8 Laser Bee… Read More
Adding DSP hardware shrinks energy for MCU core
ARM’s Cortex-M4 processor core represented quite a breakthrough in digital signal controller technology when launched in 2010. Adding a single-cycle multiplier and SIMD instructions enabled basic DSP algorithms while retaining the low power benefits of an MCU. New technology circa 2016 – embedded programmable logic – can… Read More
CEO Interview: Geoff Tate of Flex Logix
This is the second in series of interviews we will do with executives inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. Geoff Tate was the founding CEO of Rambus and is now CEO and co-founder of Flex Logix (embedded FPGA). This one should be of great interest due to the recent $16.7B acquisition of Altera by Intel. We all now know the importance… Read More
Disaggregating LLM Inference: Inside the SambaNova Intel Heterogeneous Compute Blueprint