Agile Analog Visit at #60DAC

Agile Analog Visit at #60DAC
by Daniel Payne on 07-31-2023 at 10:00 am

agile analog 60dac min

Chris Morrison, Director of Product Marketing at Agile Analog met with me on the Tuesday at DAC this year, and I asked what has changed in the last year for their analog IP business. The short answer is that the company has initially built up foundation IP for Analog Mixed-Signal (AMS) uses, then recently added new IP for data conversion,… Read More


Designing a ColdADC ASIC For Detecting Neutrinos

Designing a ColdADC ASIC For Detecting Neutrinos
by Kalar Rajendiran on 01-26-2023 at 6:00 am

The DUNE Experiment

Cliosoft recently hosted a webinar where Carl Grace, a scientist from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) talked about a cutting edge project for detecting neutrinos. The project is called the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) project. Many of us know what a neutron is, but what is a neutrino? Before we get… Read More


Analog to Digital Converter Circuits for Communications, AI and Automotive

Analog to Digital Converter Circuits for Communications, AI and Automotive
by Daniel Payne on 12-29-2022 at 6:00 am

RF Data Converters, analog to digital converter, min

Sensors are inherently analog in nature, and they get digitized for processing by using an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) block. At the recent IP SoC event I had the chance to see the presentation by Ken Potts, COO of Alphacore on their semiconductor IP for ADCs. I learned that Alphacore started out in 2012, now offering both standard… Read More


Automating and Optimizing an ADC with Layout Generators

Automating and Optimizing an ADC with Layout Generators
by Daniel Payne on 08-24-2022 at 10:00 am

Layout Geneator tool flow min

I first got involved with layout generators back in 1982 while at Intel, and about 10% of a GPU was automatically generated using some code that I wrote. It was an easy task for one engineer to complete, because the circuits were digital, and no optimization was required. In an IEEE paper from the 2022 18th International ConferenceRead More


High-speed, low-power, Hybrid ADC at IP-SoC

High-speed, low-power, Hybrid ADC at IP-SoC
by Daniel Payne on 05-10-2022 at 10:00 am

hybrid adc min

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


High-Speed Data Converters Accelerating Automotive and 5G Products

High-Speed Data Converters Accelerating Automotive and 5G Products
by Kalar Rajendiran on 11-10-2021 at 10:00 am

Enabling Technology Omni Design SWIFT

While the trend towards System-on-Chip (SoC) has been gathering momentum for quite some time, the primary driver has been integration of digital components, spurred by Moore’s law. Integrating more and more digital circuitry into a single chip has been consistently beneficial for performance, power, form factor and economic… Read More


Do You Care About What You’re Measuring? Part 3: Industrial Condition Monitoring

Do You Care About What You’re Measuring? Part 3: Industrial Condition Monitoring
by Steve Logan on 02-10-2021 at 10:00 am

Industrial Condition Monitoring

Mountains over 10,000 feet capped with snow in the winter. Some of the deepest, clearest blue sky you’ll find in the United States. Farmlands of green in the spring. That was the view looking out the second story window from the most awesome conference room I’ve ever taken a customer meeting. Even if I didn’t immediately understand… Read More


Do You Care About What You’re Measuring? Part 2: Cloud Data Centers

Do You Care About What You’re Measuring? Part 2: Cloud Data Centers
by Steve Logan on 02-02-2021 at 10:00 am

Do You Care About What Youre Measuring Cloud Data Centers

When I think about servers and data centers, I think about multiple-core/high-power CPUs, Intel’s domination over the years and GPUs coming on strong in recent years. I think about very fast digital interfaces, such as PCI Express connections and the latest DDR memory interface. Precision analog isn’t something that first comes… Read More


Xilinx Showcases Worlds First ‘High Performance’ Analogue FPGA

Xilinx Showcases Worlds First ‘High Performance’ Analogue FPGA
by Luke Miller on 04-16-2014 at 7:00 am

Last February Xilinx presented a prototype device at the 2014 IEEE international Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC, titled “A Heterogeneous 3D-IC Consisting of Two 28nm FPGA Die and 32 Reconfigurable High-Performance Data Converters” and click here to get a copy of the paper. Let me just share the intro my dear reader… … Read More


Xilinx and Red Pitaya is Tootie Fruity

Xilinx and Red Pitaya is Tootie Fruity
by Luke Miller on 04-03-2014 at 12:00 pm

Xilinx’s Zynq SoC is the best selling FPGA of all time. Zynq has brought together, at first an uncomfortable but necessary mix of software and hardware engineers. Two very different but special kind of people. Me, I’m of the hardware persuasion. Zynq is the start of the much needed open FPGA community. This will drive down the price… Read More