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Dark Silicon

Dark Silicon
by Paul McLellan on 05-26-2014 at 5:29 pm

One of the problems with chips today is that of so-called “dark silicon”. We can put massive functionality on an SoC today. A billion transistors, and that is just at 28nm. But power constraints (both leakage and dynamic power) limit how much of the chip can be powered up at any one time. In some cases this is not that big… Read More


On-chip Firewall

On-chip Firewall
by Paul McLellan on 04-22-2014 at 8:00 am

We have had the Snowden revelations that the NSA has gone rogue, Target lost a zillion credit cards, the Heartbleed bug meaning that main security protocol of the internet had been coded up wrong for a couple of years, theft of records from RSA and more. One result is that people do not completely trust a security system that depends… Read More


Sonics Performance Monitor and Hardware Trace

Sonics Performance Monitor and Hardware Trace
by Paul McLellan on 04-07-2014 at 7:29 pm

As SoCs have got more complex, and with a larger and larger software content, it is no longer good enough to just monitor how the design behaves using simulation and then completely forget about it once the design is complete. What is required is the capability to monitor the design in real time (in silicon or FPGA) to see how it is behaving.… Read More


Power Control Moving into Hardware

Power Control Moving into Hardware
by Paul McLellan on 02-14-2014 at 6:30 pm

Sonics have been building networks-on-chips (NoCs) for a long time and have amassed a rich patent portfolio. So being granted a new one isn’t usually deemed press-release-worthy. However, their latest patent on power management is pretty significant. It is patent 8,601,288 titled “Intelligent Power Controller”.

Historically… Read More


How Do You Verify a NoC?

How Do You Verify a NoC?
by Paul McLellan on 01-31-2014 at 6:01 pm

Networks-on-chip (NoCs) are very configurable, arguably the most configurable piece of IP that you can put on a chip. The only thing that comes close are highly configurable extensible VLIW processors such as those from Tensilica (Cadence), ARC (Synopsys) and CEVA but Sonics would argue their NoCs are even more flexible. But … Read More


Wearables the Big Hit at CES

Wearables the Big Hit at CES
by Paul McLellan on 01-22-2014 at 3:00 pm

There were a number of trends discernible at CES this year, one of the big ones being wearables, especially in the medical and fitness areas. I wear a FitBit Flex and I have, but rarely wear, a Pebble Watch that links to my iPhone. I would say that at this point they are promising but are more gimmicks than truly useful. My Fitbit measures… Read More


NoC, NoC: Your Chip May Be Under Attack

NoC, NoC: Your Chip May Be Under Attack
by Paul McLellan on 01-03-2014 at 12:37 pm

SoCs face a lot of issues related to security and the Network-on-Chip (NoC) is in a good position to facilitate system-wide services. SoCs are now so complex that one of the challenges is to make sure that the chip does what it is meant to do and doesn’t do what it isn’t meant to do. Just as in software, security used to be … Read More


5 Rules of Power Management Using NoCs

5 Rules of Power Management Using NoCs
by Paul McLellan on 11-18-2013 at 4:30 pm

If it has escaped your notice that power management on SoCs is important then you need to get out more. Increasingly, the complexity of the interconnect between the various processors, memories, offload processors, devices, interfaces and other blocks means that the best way to implement it is to use a network on chip (NoC). But… Read More


Open Letter from Sonics to Arteris

Open Letter from Sonics to Arteris
by Paul McLellan on 10-27-2013 at 2:00 pm

I don’t remember seeing an open letter from one EDA or IP company to another until today. Sonics have published an open letter to Charlie Janac, the CEO of Arteris. What seems to have happened is that Arteris have sold their assets to Qualcomm and the development team (which is based in France) and several AEs are already Qualcomm… Read More


What Does Sports and NoC Have in Common?

What Does Sports and NoC Have in Common?
by Randy Smith on 09-22-2013 at 11:00 am

As an Oakland Raider season ticket holder I attend as many Raider home games as possible. If you have ever attended a live sporting event at a large stadium, and you travelled by car, you are probably familiar with the traffic problems that occur at the end of the game when everyone wants to leave the stadium parking lot at the same time.… Read More