Plunify, powered by machine learning and the cloud, delivers cloud-based solutions and optimization software to enable a better quality of results, higher productivity and better efficiency for design. Plunify is a software company in the Electronic Design Market with a focus on FPGA. It was founded in 2009, has its HQ in Singapore… Read More





Retro-uC: on a road to low-cost, (ridiculously) low-volume ASICs ?
I’m a long time reader of SemiWiki; almost from the start. I’ve sometimes been a passionate commenter but as some of you may have noticed my activity lately on the forum was lower. One of the reasons is a project I am working on and I feel honoured I was invited to present the background here on SemiWiki.
I am currently working… Read More
Data Management for SoCs – Not Optional Anymore
Design Management (DM) encompasses business decisions, strategies and processes that enable product innovations. It is the foundation for both effective collaboration and gaining competitive advantage in the industry. This also applies in the high-tech space we are in, as having a sound underlying SoC data management for… Read More
Highly Modular, AI Specialized, DNA 100 IP Core Target IoT to ADAS
The Cadence Tensilica DNA100 DSP IP core is not a one-size-fits-all device. But it’s highly modular in order to support AI processing at the edge, delivering from 0.5 TMAC for on-device IoT up to 10s or 100 TMACs to support autonomous vehicle (ADAS). If you remember the first talks about IoT and Cloud, a couple of years ago, the IoT … Read More
More Negative Semiconductor News
The amount of negative news and information about the semiconductor industry seems to be increasing at a faster rate. Micron put up a better quarter than expected but more importantly guided less than expected. We are surprised that the street is surprised as the decline in memory pricing is well known and Micron has been clear about… Read More
Neural Network Efficiency with Embedded FPGA’s
The traditional metrics for evaluating IP are performance, power, and area, commonly abbreviated as PPA. Viewed independently, PPA measures can be difficult to assess. As an example, design constraints that are purely based on performance, without concern for the associated power dissipation and circuit area, are increasingly… Read More
Systems Design vs Integrated Circuit Design
This is the sixteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Electronic design automation (EDA) began and grew with the integrated circuit (IC) design business probably because IC design grew in complexity faster than printed circuit boards. The race for superiority in PCB design evolved in parallel,… Read More
Apogee Pipelining in Real Time
Pipelining exploits parallelism of sub-processes with intent to achieve a performance gain that otherwise is not possible. A design technique initially embraced at the CPU micro-architectural level, it is achieved by overlapping the execution of previously segregated processor instructions –commonly referred … 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
Semiconductor IP Reality Check
A robust, proven library of IP is a critical enabler for the entire semiconductor ecosystem. Without it, ASIC design is pretty much impossible, given time-to-market pressures. Said another way, designing IP for your next chip simply doesn’t fit the schedule – most teams have barely enough time to integrate and validate pre-existing… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet