Scaling AI as a Service Demands New Server Hardware

Scaling AI as a Service Demands New Server Hardware
by Bernard Murphy on 03-14-2023 at 6:00 am

NLP min

While I usually talk about AI inference on edge devices, for ADAS or the IoT, in this blog I want to talk about inference in the cloud or an on-premises datacenter (I’ll use “cloud” below as a shorthand to cover both possibilities). Inference throughput in the cloud is much higher today than at the edge. Think about support in financial… Read More


DSP Innovation Promises to Boost Virtual RAN Efficiency

DSP Innovation Promises to Boost Virtual RAN Efficiency
by Bernard Murphy on 03-08-2023 at 6:00 am

DSP multi threading min

5G is already real, though some of us are wondering why our phone connections aren’t faster. That perspective misses the real intent of 5G – to extend high throughput (and low latency) communication to a vast number and variety of edge devices beyond our phones. One notable application is Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), promising … Read More


Physically Aware NoC Design Arrives With a Big Claim

Physically Aware NoC Design Arrives With a Big Claim
by Bernard Murphy on 02-23-2023 at 6:00 am

NoC manual flow min

I wrote last month about physically aware NoC design, so you shouldn’t be surprised that Arteris is now offering exactly that capability 😊. First, a quick recap on why physical awareness is important, especially below 16nm. Today, between the top level and subsystems a state-of-art SoC may contain anywhere from five to twenty … Read More


ML-Based Coverage Acceleration. Innovation in Verification

ML-Based Coverage Acceleration. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 02-16-2023 at 6:00 am

Innovation New

We looked at another paper on ML-based coverage acceleration back in April 2022. Here is a different angle from IBM. 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… Read More


Synopsys Design Space Optimization Hits a Milestone

Synopsys Design Space Optimization Hits a Milestone
by Bernard Murphy on 02-09-2023 at 6:00 am

DSO.ai flow min

I talked recently with Stelios Diamantidis (Distinguished Architect, Head of Strategy, Autonomous Design Solutions) about Synopsys’ announcement on the 100th customer tapeout using their DSO.ai solution. My concern on AI-related articles is in avoiding the hype that surrounds AI in general, and conversely the skepticism… Read More


ASIL B Certification on an Industry-Class Root of Trust IP

ASIL B Certification on an Industry-Class Root of Trust IP
by Bernard Murphy on 02-08-2023 at 6:00 am

ASIL B requirements

I have always been curious about how Austemper-based safety methodologies (from Siemens EDA) compares with conventional safety flows. Siemens EDA together with Rambus recently released a white paper on getting a root of trust IP to ASIL B certification. This provides a revealing insight beyond the basics of fault simulation… Read More


Model-Based Design Courses for Students

Model-Based Design Courses for Students
by Bernard Murphy on 01-31-2023 at 6:00 am

System design min

Amid the tumult of SoC design advances and accompanying verification and implementation demands, it can be easy to forget that all this activity is preceded by architecture design. At the architecture stage the usual SoC verification infrastructure is far too cumbersome for quick turnaround modeling. Such platforms also tend… Read More


Achronix on Platform Selection for AI at the Edge

Achronix on Platform Selection for AI at the Edge
by Bernard Murphy on 01-30-2023 at 10:00 am

Edge compute

Colin Alexander ( Director of product marketing at Achronix) released a webinar recently on this topic. At only 20 minutes the webinar is an easy watch and a useful update on data traffic and implementation options. Downloads are still dominated by video (over 50% for Facebook) which now depends heavily on caching at or close to … Read More


Taming Physical Closure Below 16nm

Taming Physical Closure Below 16nm
by Bernard Murphy on 01-30-2023 at 6:00 am

NoC floorplan

Atiq Raza, well known in the semiconductor industry, has observed that “there will be no simple chips below 16nm”. By which he meant that only complex and therefore high value SoCs justify the costs of deep submicron design.  Getting to closure on PPA goals is getting harder for such designs, especially now at 7nm and 5nm. Place and… Read More


Effective Writing and ChatGPT. The SEMI Test

Effective Writing and ChatGPT. The SEMI Test
by Bernard Murphy on 01-25-2023 at 6:00 am

Writing and ChatGPT min

ChatGPT is a hot topic, leading a few of my colleagues to ask me as a writer what I think of the technology.  I write content for tech companies and most of my contacts freely confess that they or more often their experts struggle with writing. If a tool could do that job for them they would be happy and I would have to find a different hobby.… Read More