Many years ago, there were attempts to (re-) introduce a graphical entry approach to building RTL design. The Renoir product was one example. The idea has some initial appeal. You describe the behavior in a small block using (textual) RTL but the larger structure of instances and higher-level connectivity can be described as a … Read More
I recently found a couple of articles which caught my interest, both on roles bacteria can play in electronics. The first has to do with a method to form semiconductor-like structures on a sheet of graphene. Graphene is an excellent conductor but in sheet form but conducts more or less equally in all directions. So the first problem… Read More
Israel has a strong pedigree in functional verification. Among others, Verisity (an early contributor to class-based testbench design and constrained random testing) started in Israel and RocketTick (hardware-based simulation acceleration), acquired more recently by Cadence, is based in Israel. So when I hear about an … Read More
Anyone who travels long distances frequently is painfully familiar with this problem, but you may be wondering why I am mentioning it in this forum. The American Institute of Physics has a Chaos journal which looks at interdisciplinary problems in non-linear dynamics and recently published an article on just this topic.
There… Read More
Neural nets are a hot topic these days and encourage us to think of solutions to complex tasks like image recognition in terms of how the human brain handles that task. But our model today for this neuromorphic computing is several steps removed from how neurons actually work. We’re still using conventional digital computation … Read More
Technology in and around the LHC can sometimes be a useful exemplar for how technologies may evolve in the more mundane world of IoT devices, clouds and intelligent systems. I wrote recently on how LHC teams manage Big Data; here I want to look at how they use machine learning to study and reduce that data.
The reason high-energy physics… Read More
Time for a little fun again. Most of us played this game when we were kids. It fairly quickly degenerates into “infinity plus one” or the even more preemptive “whatever you say next plus one”. But if you’re not allowed to use infinity and you have to name the number and demonstrate how you get to it, is this still interesting? For mathematicians… Read More
It’s always a pleasure when a vendor gives a really informative, vendor-independent presentation on what’s happening in some domain of the industry and wraps up with (by that point) a well-deserved summary of that vendor’ solutions in that space. Ron Lowman did just that at the Linley conference on Mobile and Wearables, where … Read More
For a while it seemed like Mentor lived on the margins of the (RTL) design-for-power game. They had interesting micro-architectural optimization capabilities through their Calypto heritage but no real industry chops in power estimation, a must-have when you are claiming to reduce power. Better known offerings in RTL power … Read More
If you are a regular reader, you’ll know I like to explore the boundaries of technology. Readers I respect sometimes interpret this as a laughable attempt to oppose the inevitable march of progress, but that is not my purpose. In understanding the limits of a particular technology, it is possible to envision what properties a successor… Read More
