Primarius 2B

Cadence Tensilica Spins Next Upgrade to LX Architecture

Cadence Tensilica Spins Next Upgrade to LX Architecture
by Bernard Murphy on 09-21-2023 at 6:00 am

Xtensa LX8 processor

When considering SoC architectures it is easy to become trapped in simple narratives. These assume the center of compute revolves around a central core or core cluster, typically Arm, more recently perhaps a RISC-V option. Throw in an accelerator or two and the rest is detail. But for today’s competitive products that view is a … Read More


Water Sustainability in Semiconductor Manufacturing: Challenges and Solutions

Water Sustainability in Semiconductor Manufacturing: Challenges and Solutions
by Kalar Rajendiran on 09-20-2023 at 10:00 am

Typical on line sensor monitoring points in the semiconductor industry

Water, the planet’s lifeblood, remains a finite and precious resource. The Earth’s total water supply has remained relatively constant over millennia. However, it is the uneven distribution of freshwater and the challenges of providing access to clean water that are causing stress in various parts of the world.… Read More


Has U.S. already lost Chip war to China? Is Taiwan’s silicon shield a liability?

Has U.S. already lost Chip war to China? Is Taiwan’s silicon shield a liability?
by Robert Maire on 09-20-2023 at 6:00 am

SMIC 7nm
  • Huawei’s 7NM chip? This wasn’t supposed to happen
  • Are Chips a weapon for U.S. or China? Role reversal?
  • Will Taiwan turn from protected asset to unwanted liability?
  • Are sanctions so porous that US has already lost to China?
While EUV is critical to advanced chips there are workarounds

Many people either thought or assumed… Read More


Hyperstone Webinar – There’s More to a Storage System Than Meets the Eye

Hyperstone Webinar – There’s More to a Storage System Than Meets the Eye
by Mike Gianfagna on 09-19-2023 at 10:00 am

Hyperstone Webinar There's More to a Storage System Than Meets the Eye

Founded in 1990, Hyperstone is a fabless NAND flash memory controller company enabling safe, reliable and secure storage systems. The company designs, develops and delivers high-quality, innovative semiconductor solutions to enable its customers to produce world-class products for industrial, embedded, automotive and… Read More


Inference Efficiency in Performance, Power, Area, Scalability

Inference Efficiency in Performance, Power, Area, Scalability
by Bernard Murphy on 09-19-2023 at 6:00 am

AI graphic

Support for AI at the edge has prompted a good deal of innovation in accelerators, initially in CNNs, evolving to DNNs and RNNs (convolutional neural nets, deep neural nets, and recurrent neural nets). Most recently, the transformer technology behind the craze in large language models is proving to have important relevance at… Read More


Intel Ushers a New Era of Advanced Packaging with Glass Substrates

Intel Ushers a New Era of Advanced Packaging with Glass Substrates
by Mike Gianfagna on 09-18-2023 at 10:00 am

Intel Ushers a New Era of Advanced Packaging with Glass Substrates


Intel recently issued a press announcement that has significant implications for the future of semiconductors.  The release announces Intel’s new glass substrate technology. The headline states: Glass substrates help overcome limitations of organic materials by enabling an order of magnitude improvement in design rulesRead More


The TSMC OIP Backstory

The TSMC OIP Backstory
by Daniel Nenni on 09-18-2023 at 6:00 am

TSMC OIP 2023

This is the 15th anniversary of the TSMC Open Innovation Platform (OIP). The OIP Ecosystem Forum will kick off on September 27th in Santa Clara, California and continue around the world for the next two months in person and on-line in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Israel. These are THE most attended semiconductor… Read More


Podcast EP182: The Alphacore/Quantum Leap Solutions Collaboration Explained, with Ken Potts and Mike Ingster

Podcast EP182: The Alphacore/Quantum Leap Solutions Collaboration Explained, with Ken Potts and Mike Ingster
by Daniel Nenni on 09-15-2023 at 10:00 am

Dan is joined by Mike Ingster from Quantum Leap Solutions (QLS) and Ken Potts from Alphacore. Mike and Ken explain how QLS and Alphacore collaborate to provide industry-leading IP and system solutions to their mutual customers. The markets served by both QLS and Alphacore are discussed and the synergies are explained in this informative… Read More


CEO Interview: Koen Verhaege, CEO of Sofics

CEO Interview: Koen Verhaege, CEO of Sofics
by Daniel Nenni on 09-15-2023 at 6:00 am

CEO Interview Koen Verhaege, CEO of Sofics

Koen Verhaege, CEO of Sofics (“Solutions for ICs”), has developed his career first as an engineer, later as a business leader and entrepreneur, working on IP development and valorisation. Koen’s technical accomplishments, publications and patents are in the field of on-chip ESD protection design.

Today, Koen… Read More


Deeper RISC-V pipeline plows through vector-scalar loops

Deeper RISC-V pipeline plows through vector-scalar loops
by Don Dingee on 09-14-2023 at 10:00 am

Atrevido 423 + V16 Vector Unit with its deeper RISC-V pipeline technology, Gazillion

Many modern processor performance benchmarks rely on as many as three levels of cache staying continuously fed. Yet, new data-intensive applications like multithreaded generative AI and 4K image processing often break conventional caching, leaving the expensive execution units behind them stalled. A while back, Semidynamics… Read More