Big Data Lessons from the LHC

Big Data Lessons from the LHC
by Bernard Murphy on 07-20-2016 at 7:00 am

Big Data techniques have become important in many domains, not just to drive marketing strategies but also for semiconductor design, as evidenced by Ansys’ recent announcements around their use of Big Data analytics. And they should become even more important in the brave new world of the IoT. So it makes sense to look at an organization… Read More


TMR approaches should vary by FPGA type

TMR approaches should vary by FPGA type
by Don Dingee on 06-20-2016 at 4:00 pm

We’ve introduced the concepts behind triple modular redundancy (TMR) before, using built-in capability in Synopsys Synplify Premier to synthesize TMR circuitry into FPGAs automatically. A recent white paper authored by Angela Sutton revisits the subject… Read More


Rebooting EDA

Rebooting EDA
by Bernard Murphy on 05-23-2016 at 7:00 am

In the 35 years since commercial EDA went mainstream a lot of advances have been made but the fundamental architecture and even the philosophy of tooling have really not advanced at all. Tools are designed around individual tasks – analysis and optimization within a specific domain – under the assumption that variability within… Read More


"Re-Inventing" Tapeout Sign-off — Applying Big Data Techniques to Electrical Analysis

"Re-Inventing" Tapeout Sign-off — Applying Big Data Techniques to Electrical Analysis
by Tom Dillinger on 05-23-2016 at 7:00 am

A common SoC design methodology in current use starts with preparation of the physical floorplan — e.g., block/pin placement, global clock domain and bus signal planning, developing the global/local power distribution (and dynamic power domain management techniques). Decoupling capacitor estimated densities and… Read More


IoT + Big Data + Cloud + AI Integration Insights from Patents

IoT + Big Data + Cloud + AI Integration Insights from Patents
by Alex G. Lee on 04-04-2016 at 12:00 pm

IoT Big Data Aggregation
US20140297826 illustrates a system for big data aggregation in a sensor network. The most important part of the Internet of Things (IoT) big data analytics is collecting data before storing the data. The Hadoop big data platform supports collecting data in Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). HDFS … Read More


Automotive Deaths and Big Data

Automotive Deaths and Big Data
by Roger C. Lanctot on 02-07-2016 at 8:00 pm

Nothing focuses peoples’ attention quite as effectively as death and there’s been a lot of it on U.S. highways lately. Preliminary figures released this week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reveal that for the first nine months of 2015 traffic fatalities increased 9.3%.… Read More


Why Medical IoT Won’t Take Off

Why Medical IoT Won’t Take Off
by Bernard Murphy on 11-28-2015 at 7:00 am

In the wave of enthusiasm surrounding the IoT, medical applications are often held up as an obvious and compelling area where applications cannot fail to succeed. I beg to differ. I think there are two important reasons why almost no such applications will succeed, at least not in the way we seem to be approaching them today.

The first… Read More


Strengthening That Serving ARM

Strengthening That Serving ARM
by Bernard Murphy on 11-15-2015 at 4:00 pm

Everyone is aware of ARM’s dominance in mobile devices and their likely dominance in IoT, but what about servers? ARM has been making a play for this area but conventional wisdom is that fortress Intel will protect its server market at all costs. You’ll hear that servers are not so much about compute power, they’re more about I/O and… Read More


Pushing on AXI-connected IP in FPGAs

Pushing on AXI-connected IP in FPGAs
by Don Dingee on 11-03-2015 at 12:00 pm

Success stories are great. Reading how someone uses a product contributes much more insight than reading about a product. Last month we had a teaser for a presentation by Wave Semiconductor; this month, we have the slides showing how they are using FPGA-based prototyping, AXI transactions, and DPI to speed up development.

First,… Read More


S2C ships UltraScale empowering SoFPGA

S2C ships UltraScale empowering SoFPGA
by Don Dingee on 10-10-2015 at 7:00 am

Most of the discussion around Xilinx UltraScale parts in FPGA-based prototyping modules has been on capacity, and that is certainly a key part of the story. Another use case is developing, one that may be even more important than simply packing a bigger design into a single part without partitioning. The real win with this technology… Read More