In the normal evolution of specialized hardware IP functions, initial implementations start in academic research or R&D in big semiconductor companies, motivating new ventures specializing in functions of that type, who then either build critical mass to make it as a chip or IP supplier (such as Mobileye – intially)… Read More
On-Chip Networks at the Bleeding Edge of ML
I wrote a while back about some of the more exotic architectures for machine learning (ML), especially for neural net (NN) training in the data center but also in some edge applications. In less hairy applications, we’re used to seeing CPU-based NNs at the low end, GPUs most commonly (and most widely known) in data centers as the workhorse… Read More
Supporting ASIL-D Through Your Network on Chip
The ISO 26262 standard defines four Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASILs), from A to D, technically measures of risk rather than safety mechanisms, of which ASIL-D is the highest. ASIL-D represents a failure potentially causing severe or fatal injury in a reasonably common situation over which the driver has little control.… Read More
ISO 26262: People, Process and Product
Kurt Shuler, VP Marketing at Arteris IP, is pretty passionate that people working in the automotive supply chain should understand not just a minimalist reading of ISO 26262 as it applies to them but rather the broader intent, particularly as it is likely to affect others higher in the supply chain. As an active ISO 26262 working … Read More
A Last-Level Cache for SoCs
We tend to think of cache primarily as an adjunct to processors to improve performance. Reading and writing main memory (DRAM) is very slow thanks to all the package and board impedance between chips. If you can fetch blocks of contiguous memory from the DRAM to a local on-chip memory, locality of reference in most code ensures much… Read More
The Starting Point of Functional Safety Analysis
In the course of building my understanding of functional safety, particularly with respect to ISO 26262, I have developed a better understanding of the design methods used to mitigate safety problems and the various tools and techniques that are applied to measure the impact of those diagnostics against ASIL goals. One area in… Read More
ISO 26262: My IP Supplier Checks the Boxes, So That’s Covered, Right?
Everyone up and down the electronics supply chain is jumping on the ISO 26262 bandwagon and naturally they all want to show that whatever they sell is compliant or ready for compliance. We probably all know the basics here – a product certification from one of the assessment organizations, a designated safety manager and a few other… Read More
Safety in the Interconnect
Safety is a big deal these days, not only in automotive applications, but also in critical infrastructure and industrial applications (the power grid, nuclear reactors and spacecraft, to name just a few compelling examples). We generally understand that functional blocks like CPUs and GPUs have to be safe, but what about the … Read More
Machine Learning Neural Nets and the On-Chip Network
Machine learning (ML), and neural nets (NNs) as a subset of ML, are blossoming in all sorts of applications, not just in the cloud but now even more at the edge. We can now find them in our phones, in our cars, even in IoT applications. We have all seen applications for intelligent vision (e.g. pedestrian detection) and voice recognition… Read More
Connecting Coherence
If a CPU or CPU cluster in an SoC is the brain of an SoC, then the interconnect is the rest of the central nervous system, connecting all the other processing and IO functions to that brain. This interconnect must enable these functions to communicate with the brain, with multiple types of memory, and with each other as quickly and predictably… Read More