I never understood when I was a kid how ‘the Blob’ could actually catch someone but it sure did. It caught the unsuspecting, the off guard. I mean you’d have time for a soda and shower if you saw it on your road. And no, your manager is not the Blob; don’t think like that, it’s always his boss. The blob comes to consume the worker who was unaware… Read More
The fixed and the finite: QoR in FPGAs
There is an intriguingly amorphous term in FPGA design circles lately: Quality of Results, or QoR. Fitting a design in an FPGA is just the start – is a design optimal in real estate, throughput, power consumption, and IP reuse? Paradoxically, as FPGAs get bigger and take on bigger signal processing problems, QoR has become a larger… Read More
Minimize the Cost of Testing ARM® Processor-based Designs and Other Multicore SoCs
On my first job out of college as an IC design engineer I was surprised to discover that a major cost of chips was in the amount of time spent on the tester before being shipped. That is still true today, so how would you keep your tester time down, test coverage high and with a minimum number of pins when using multiple processors on a single… Read More
Remember FPGA Memory
We must admit the excitement of the FinFETs and all that coupled with the enormous amount of DSPs and BRAMs in the FPGA world is very cool. They even have ARMs, and I highly recommend that they get Legs then they can run around and everything and fit in with the rest of us. Perhaps the Feds can grant them immigration status and they could… Read More
TSMC and Xilinx on the FinFAST Track!
The power of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem never ceases to amaze me. On one hand you have the Intel backed press crowing about Intel stealing Altera from TSMC. On the other hand you have Xilinx and TSMC crowing about a new ‘one-team’ approach. If you are interested in the real story you’ve come to the right place.
“Altera’s… Read More
GPU vs. FPGA
I just don’t understand it? My kids love surprises but I have yet to find management that does, go figure but boy during a review they can really spring them on ya! What surprises me is the absurdness of my title, GPU vs. FPGA. FPGAs are not GPUs and likewise but none the less there is the push to make a fit where nature does not allow. I liken… Read More
It’s all in the details of FPGA requirements management
Word association: if I said “requirements management”, you’d probably say IBM Rational “DOORS,” or maybe Serena or Polarion if you come from the IT world. But what if the requirements you need to manage are for an FPGA or ASIC, with HDL and testbench code and waveform files and more details backing verification, and compliance… Read More
Prototyping Over 100 Million ASIC Gates Capacity
Most SoCs today are being prototyped in FPGA hardware before committing to costly IC fabrication. You could just design and build your own FPGA prototyping system, or instead choose something off the shelf and then concentrate on your core competence of SoC design.
Thanks to the FPGA vendors like Xilinx we now have FGPA prototyping… Read More
Are there enough FPGA tools?
Sometimes I send my boy to grab me a tool and hours later he comes back with the wrong one. The patient man that I am, I calmly explain what I mean and then the world is right once more. Believe that do ya?
As you know the world is flooded with tools, tools and more tools. We all have our ruts and favorite flows and such but given the huge FPGA … Read More
Which is the best FPGA – Xilinx
Your corporate training will teach you there is no such thing as stereo types and they are bad, naughty. We all know they are true; it’s just some companies now of days try to force the worker bees to do a flash erase and drop your brain at the door. I never participated in that and as you can imagine it went very well. Dilbert is true…
I am … Read More
TSMC Unveils the World’s Most Advanced Logic Technology at IEDM