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
An IIot Gateway to the Cloud
A piece of learning we all seem to have gained from practical considerations of IoT infrastructure is that no, it doesn’t make sense to ship all the data from an IoT edge device to the cloud and let the cloud do all the computational heavy lifting. On the face of it that idea seemed good – all those edge devices could be super cheap (silicon… Read More
Partitioning for Prototypes
I earlier wrote a piece to make you aware of a webinar to be hosted by Aldec on some of their capabilities for partitioning large designs for prototyping. That webinar has now been broadcast and I have provided a link to the recorded version at the end of this piece. The webinar gets into the details of how exactly you would use the software… Read More
Embedded FPGA IP as a Post-Silicon Debugger
The hardware functionality of a complex SoC is difficult to verify. Embedded software developed for a complex, multi-core SoC is extremely difficult to verify. An RTOS may need to be ported and validated. Application software needs to be developed, and optimized for performance. Sophisticated methodologies are employed to… Read More
Webinar: Aiding ASIC Design Partitioning for multi-FPGA Prototyping
The advantages of prototyping a hardware design on a FPGA platform are widely recognized, for software development, debug and regression in particular while the ultimate ASIC hardware is still in development. And if your design will fit into a single FPGA, this is not an especially challenging task (as long as you know your way … Read More
Embedding FPGA IP
The appeal of embedding an FPGA IP in an ASIC design is undeniable. For much of your design, you want all the advantages of ASIC: up to GHz performance, down to mW power (with active power management), all with very high levels of integration with a broad range of internal and 3[SUP]rd[/SUP]-party IP (analog/RF, sensor fusion, image/voice… Read More
A Functional Safety Primer for FPGA – the White Paper
Following up on their webinar on functional safety in FPGA-based designs, Synopsys have now published a white paper expanding on some of those topics. For those who didn’t get a chance to see the webinar this blog follows the white paper flow and is similar but not identical to my webinar blog, particularly around differences between… Read More
Webinar: Fast-Track to Riviera-PRO
Whether you’re right out of college, starting on your first design, a burn-and-churn designer thinking there must be a better way or an ASIC designer wanting to do a little prototyping, this webinar may be for you. It’s a fast start on using the Aldec Riviera-PRO platform for verification setup, run and debug, and more. There are … Read More
FPGA-Based Networking for Datacenters: A Deeper Dive
I’ve written before about the growing utility of FPGA-based solutions in datacenters, particularly around configurable networking applications. There I just touched on the general idea; Achronix have developed a white-paper to expand on the need in more detail and to explain how a range of possible solutions based on their … Read More
Machine Learning Optimizes FPGA Timing
Machine learning (ML) is the hot new technology of our time so EDA development teams are eagerly searching for new ways to optimize various facets of design using ML to distill wisdom from the mountains of data generated in previous designs. Pre-ML, we had little interest in historical data and would mostly look only at localized… Read More
Rethinking Multipatterning for 2nm Node