It’s a hostile world we live in, and cybersecurity of connected devices is a big concern. Attacks are rising rapidly, and vulnerabilities get exploited immediately. Supply chains are complex. Regulations are proliferating. Secrets don’t stay secrets for long – in fact, the only secret in a system with open-source algorithms… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Sensing – Who needs it?
In a simple answer – everyone. A keynote presentation “Sensing the Unknowns and Managing Power” by Mahesh Tirupattur, the Executive Vice President at Analog Bits at the recent Siemens User2User conference, discussed the need and application of sensors in computing and power applications. Why sense? As Mahesh explains, sensing… Read More
Protecting High-Speed Interfaces in Data Centers with Security IP
The never ending appetite for higher bandwidths, faster data interfaces and lower latencies are bringing about changes in how data is processed at data centers. The expansion of cloud to the network edge has introduced broad use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for extracting meaning from data. Cloud supercomputing… Read More
Webinar – 112 Gbps PAM4 Implementation with Real-World Case Studies
Are 112G PAM4 channels in one of your current or future designs? If you’re focusing on advanced products, the answer is likely YES. Design of these channels is quite challenging. Silicon design, SerDes, PCB traces, and interconnect all need to be balanced to achieve success. As they say, getting there is half the fun. An upcoming… Read More
Why Traceability Now? Blame Custom SoC Demand
In the SoC world, we can’t believe our good luck. Every product maker now wants bespoke silicon solutions with the most advanced AI, communications, SLAM, etc. Which is fantastic for business, but this level of demand also drags us into a new level of accountability, especially in requirements traceability. Time was that only … Read More
Meet Kandou’s Frank Lavety, Behind the Scenes Point Person for Timely Product Delivery
I learned about Kandou a year ago and liked what I heard, as should anyone who wants higher res displays and faster downloads from their electronic devices. I’ve been tracking Kandou since and believe it’s living up to its goal to be the undisputed innovator in high-speed, energy-efficient chip-to-chip link solutions to improve… Read More
Scaling is Failing with Moore’s Law and Dennard
Looking backward and forward, the white paper from Codasip “Scaling is Failing” by Roddy Urquhart provides an interesting history of processor development since the early 1970s to the present. However it doesn’t stop there and continues to extrapolate what the chip industry has in store for the rest of this decade. For the last… Read More
High-speed, low-power, Hybrid ADC at IP-SoC
Andrew Levy and I both worked at Intel and Opmaxx, and I knew that he was now working at Alphacore, an IP company specializing in mixed-signal, RF, imaging and rad-hard applications. I was curious what Alphacore was up to, so at the IP-SoC Silicon Valley 2022 event I watched the ADC presentation from Ken Potts, COO of Alphacore. Mr.… Read More
Designing Ultra-Low-Power, Always On IP
It’s popular to use DSP chips for vision processing in diverse applications like ADAS, security cameras and AR. Tensilica has been designing DSP chips and IP since 1997, and their technology was successful enough that Cadence acquired Tensilica back in 2013. At the IP-SoC Silicon Valley 2022 event in April I had the pleasure… Read More
Advantages of Large-Scale Synchronous Clocking Domains in AI Chip Designs
We are currently in the hockey stick growth phase of AI. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are happening at a lightning pace. And, while the rate of adoption is exploding, so is model size. Over the past couple of years, we’ve gone from about two billion parameters to Google Brain’s recently announced trillion-parameter… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet