The industry recently concluded a series of technology events for the all the major foundries. Done as virtual events this year, each one provided a significant update on technology platforms, roadmaps and ecosystem partnerships. These events are quite valuable to chip design teams who need to be aware of the latest in process,… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
PLDA Brings Flexible Support for Compute Express Link (CXL) to SoC and FPGA Designers
A few months ago, I posted a piece about PLDA expanding its support for two emerging protocol standards: CXL™ and Gen-Z™. The Compute Express Link (CXL) specification defines a set of three protocols that run on top of the PCIe PHY layer. The current revision of the CXL (2.0) specification runs with the PCIe 5.0 PHY layer at a maximum… Read More
Low Power SRAM Register Files for IoT, AI and Wearables
SRAM is the workhorse for on-chip memories, valued for its performance and easy integration with standard processes. The needs of wearable, IoT and AI SOCs have put a lot of pressure on the requirements for all on-chip memories. This is perhaps most evident in the area of power. AI chips that rely heavily on SRAM register files are… Read More
Folding at Home. The Ultimate in Parallel Acceleration
You may have heard of Folding at Home. It’s a very creative way that a bioengineering team, based at Washington University in St Louis, are modeling the process of protein folding. Greg Bowman, an associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the university directs the project and presented at Arm DevSummit this year. … Read More
Webinar Replay on TileLink from Truechip
The extremely popular RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) originally came from the Berkeley Architecture Research (BAR) group. BAR also developed several other key pieces of enabling technology that have helped RISC-V become so popular. Among these are Rocket Chip which serves as a RISC-V based SOC generator. It can … Read More
The Reality of ISO 26262 Interpretation. Experience Matters
Interpreting ISO 26262 without ambiguity is not always easy. Suppliers and integrators can read some aspects differently, creating confusion. Which is a problem since ISO 26262 has become so much a part of any discussion on automotive electronics that it has gained almost biblical significance. Yet most of us, even suppliers… Read More
Better Speech Recognition by Reducing Babble
I’ve become a bit of a connoisseur of voice-based control, so when Chris Rowen did a pitch on Babble Labs at Arm Dev Summit last month, I wanted to listen in. Chris was the CEO of Babble Labs, recently acquired by the Cisco Webex group where he’s now listed as VP Engineering of the Voice Technology Group. You should expect to see this… Read More
Powering the Next Generation of Hearables and Wearables with Chipus
Chipus is an interesting company. It’s been around since 2008 and focuses on mixed-signal ASICs, intellectual property blocks and IC design services. They are headquartered on the island of Florianopolis, which is described as the most dense startup ecosystem in Brazil. The company has substantial skills in analog and mixed… Read More
Agile and DevOps for Hardware. Keynotes at DVCon Europe
Paul Cunningham (Verification CVP/GM at Cadence) initiated our monthly Innovation in Verification blog to hunt for novel ideas in verification, breaking past the usual steady, necessary but undramatic pace of incremental advances. I attended a couple of sessions from DVCon Europe recently, and was encouraged to hear a couple… Read More
SiFive Expands RISC-V Technology and its Ecosystem at the Fall Linley Processor Conference
As the Linley Fall Processor Conference winds down, there are certain presenting companies that left a lasting impression. SiFive is one of those companies. On October 21, SiFive introduced the newest member of the SiFive Intelligence family of processor coresSiFive Intelligence family of processor cores, based on… Read More


AI Bubble?