Webinar: ASIC and FPGA Functional Verification Study

Webinar: ASIC and FPGA Functional Verification Study
by Alex Tan on 10-23-2018 at 12:00 pm

ASIC or FPGA? Each design style has earned designers’ votes depending on the level of urgency, application complexity and funding of their assigned projects. While it is feasible to transition from ASIC to FPGA design or vice versa, such a move is usually done across project refresh instead of midcourse.

Both Xilinx and … Read More


Custom SoC Platform Solutions for AI Applications at the TSMC OIP

Custom SoC Platform Solutions for AI Applications at the TSMC OIP
by Daniel Nenni on 09-27-2018 at 12:00 pm

The TSMC OIP event is next week and again it is packed with a wide range of technical presentations from TSMC, top semiconductor, EDA, and IP companies, plus long time TSMC partner and ASIC provider Open-Silicon, a SiFive Company. You can see the full agenda HERE.

AI is revolutionizing and transforming virtually every industry… Read More


When Why and How Should You Use Embedded FPGA Technology

When Why and How Should You Use Embedded FPGA Technology
by Alok Sanghavi on 06-27-2018 at 7:00 am

If integrating an embedded FPGA (eFPGA) into your ASIC or SoC design strikes you as odd, it shouldn’t. ICs have been absorbing almost every component on a circuit board for decades, starting with transistors, resistors, and capacitors — then progressing to gates, ALUs, microprocessors, and memories. FPGAs are simply one more… Read More


7nm Networking Platform Delivers Data Center ASICs

7nm Networking Platform Delivers Data Center ASICs
by Daniel Nenni on 06-26-2018 at 7:00 am

We all know IP is critical for advanced ASIC design. Well-designed and carefully tested IP blocks and subsystems are the lifeblood of any advanced chip project. Those IP suppliers who can measure up to the need, especially at advanced process nodes, will do well, absolutely.

It is interesting to note that eSilicon now has a very … Read More


When FPGA Design Looks More Like ASIC Design

When FPGA Design Looks More Like ASIC Design
by Bernard Murphy on 06-08-2018 at 7:00 am

I am sure there are many FPGA designers who are quite content to rely on hardware vendor tools to define, check, implement and burn their FPGAs, and who prefer to test in-system to validate functionality. But that approach is unlikely to work when you’re building on the big SoC platforms – Zynq, Arria and even the big non-SoC devices.… Read More


Being Intelligent about AI ASICs

Being Intelligent about AI ASICs
by Tom Simon on 06-06-2018 at 12:00 pm

The progression from CPU to GPU, FPGA and then ASIC affords an increase in throughput and performance, but comes at the price of decreasing flexibility and generality. Like most new areas of endeavor in computing, artificial intelligence (AI) began with implementations based on CPU’s and software. And, as have so many other applications,… Read More


Webinar: Achieve High-performance and High-throughput with Intel based FPGA Prototyping

Webinar: Achieve High-performance and High-throughput with Intel based FPGA Prototyping
by Daniel Nenni on 03-19-2018 at 12:00 pm

FPGAs have been used for ASIC prototyping since the beginning of FPGAs (1980s) allowing hardware and software designers to work in harmony developing, testing, and optimizing their products. We covered the history of FPGAs in Chapter 3 of our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry”, which includes … Read More


Herb Reiter on the Challenges of 2.5D ASIC SiPs

Herb Reiter on the Challenges of 2.5D ASIC SiPs
by Daniel Nenni on 02-23-2018 at 12:00 pm

Years ago my good friend Herb Reiter promoted the importance of 2.5D packaging to anybody and everybody who would listen including myself. Today Herb’s vision is in production and the topic of many papers, webinars, and conferences. According to Herb, and I agree completely, advanced IC packaging is an important technology for… Read More


What does a Deep Learning Chip Look Like

What does a Deep Learning Chip Look Like
by Daniel Nenni on 02-16-2018 at 12:00 pm

There’s been a lot of discussion of late about deep learning technology and its impact on many markets and products. A lot of the technology under discussion is basically hardware implementations of neural networks, a concept that’s been around for a while.

What’s new is the compute power that advanced semiconductor technology… Read More


High Performance Ecosystem for 14nm-FinFET ASICs with 2.5D Integrated HBM2 Memory

High Performance Ecosystem for 14nm-FinFET ASICs with 2.5D Integrated HBM2 Memory
by Mitch Heins on 02-07-2018 at 10:00 am


High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) systems have been successfully used for some time now in the network switching and high-performance computing (HPC) spaces. Now, adding fuel to the HBM fire, there is another market that shares similar system requirements as HPC and that is Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially AI systems doing… Read More