Periodically I like to check in on the unsung heroes behind the attention-grabbing world of design. I’m speaking of the people responsible for the development and deployment infrastructure on which we all depend – version control, testing, build, release – collectively known these days as DevOps (development operations). … Read More
I had grown comfortable thinking about RISC-V as a cost-saving and more flexible alternative to Intel/AMD or Arm in embedded applications. Where clearly it is already doing very well. But following a discussion with Dave Kelf and Adnan Hamid of Breker, RISC-V goals have become much more ambitious, chasing the same big system applications… Read More
A little thinking outside the box this time. Microsoft is adding automation to their (and LinkedIn) code reviews; maybe we should consider this option also? Paul Cunningham (Senior VP/GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue our series… Read More
While fully autonomous driving may now be a distant dream, ADAS continues to be a very active industry driver as much for its safety advantages as for other features. Today in the hierarchy of SAE levels, SAE 2+ may represent the most active area of development rather than levels 3 through 5. This range of options still requires a human… Read More
Cadence hosted a panel at DAC on how EDA, MCAD and industrial software have come together, a topic I always find interesting. Many years ago, I worked on a NAVAIR contract bid team, an eye-opener for a young engineer who thought that innovation started and ended with electronic design. I remember CATIA (3D modeling) being a component… Read More
I wrote earlier about managing service-level risk in SoC design, since the minimum service level a system can guarantee under realistic traffic is critical to OEM guarantees of dependable system performance. An ABS design which might get bogged down in traffic under only 0.1% of scenarios is of no use to anyone. That said, meeting… Read More
It’s no secret that system companies are driving a lot of new silicon. Google, AWS, Tesla and others have well-established design teams delivering differentiated servers, AI engines and other technologies. I’m sure NVIDIA suspects sub rosa projects are already underway in many of these hyperscalers to design out their GPUs.… Read More
For what seems like a long time in the fast-moving world of AI, CNNs and their relatives have driven AI engine architectures at the edge. While the nature of neural net algorithms has evolved significantly, they are all assumed to be efficiently handled on a heterogenous platform processing through the layers of a DNN: an NPU for … Read More
Constrained random methods in simulation are universally popular, still can the method be improved? Paul Cunningham (Senior VP/GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.… Read More
Discussion on design metrics tends to revolve around power, performance, safety, and security. All of these are important, but there is an additional performance objective a product must meet defined by a minimum service level agreement (SLA). A printer display may work fine most of the time yet will intermittently corrupt the… Read More
