Synopsys is bridging its long-running ARC® processor IP strategy into a RISC-V architecture – Bernard Murphy introduced the news here on SemiWiki last November. We’re getting new insight from Synopsys on its ARC-V™ portfolio and how they see RISC-V IP plus their mature software development toolchain IP fitting customer needs… Read More
Whether we realize it or not, everyday applications we use depend on data gathered by sensors. We can bet that pretty much every application uses at least a couple of different types of sensors, if not more. That is because different types of sensors are better suited to collect data depending on the application, the environment … Read More
On Sep 20th, Synopsys announced an expansion of its DesignWare® ARC® Processor IP portfolio with new 128-bit ARC VPX2 and 256-bit ARC VPX3 DSP Processors targeting low-power embedded SoCs. In 2019, the company had launched a 512-bit ARC VPX5 DSP processor for high-performance signal processing SoCs. Due to the length, format… Read More
If you are like me, you will get a 5G phone because of the high bandwidth it offers. However, there is a lot more to 5G than just fast data. In fact, one of the appealing features of 5G is low bandwidth communication. This is useful for edge devices that perform infrequent and low volume data transfers and depend on long battery life. Prior… Read More
I assume you know the Geoffrey Moore “crossing the chasm” concept, jumping from early stage enthusiasts trying your product because they’ll try anything new, to expanding to a mainstream and intrinsically more critical audience – a much tougher proposition. I’d argue there may be more than one of these transitions in the… Read More
Building devices for the IoT has become especially challenging thanks to two conflicting requirements. The device has to be small and ultra-low power in most applications but also in many of those applications it has to provide a high-level of security, especially to defend high-value targets like smart metering, payment terminals,… Read More
In this era of high-performance, low-power, and low-cost devices coming up at an unprecedented scale, the SoCs can never attain the ultimate in performance; always there is scope for improvement. Several methods including innovative technology, multi-processor architecture, memory, data traffic management for low latency,… Read More
One of the big surprises I got at Synopsys’ ARC conference is that ARC is #2 in terms of share of licensed microprocessor shipments. I think most readers of Semiwiki would know ARM is #1 but would guess that MIPS (now owned by Imagination Technologies) is #2. But you’d be wrong, ARC is over twice as big.
Last week Synopsys… Read More
With growing SoC size, complexity, software and hardware content in it and shrinking time-to-market, the SoC design completion in time has become increasingly dependent on IP which need to be sourced (internally or externally), customized according to the design need and integrated together into the SoC. While IP providers… Read More
As we left an exciting year 2014 which is poised to record 7+ % increase in semiconductor revenue (~ $338 B) compared to 2013 (~ $315 B) and entered into another promising year 2015 for semiconductors, I looked back over the year bygone and collected inferences from some of the major important events which clearly convey how 2015 can… Read More
