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Webinar – AI/ML SoC Memory and Interconnect IP Perspectives

Webinar – AI/ML SoC Memory and Interconnect IP Perspectives
by Tom Simon on 10-08-2019 at 10:00 am
Categories: Events, IP, Silvaco

For decades development work on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) was done on traditional CPUs and memory configurations. Now that we are in the “hockey stick” upturn in deployment of AI and ML, the search is on for the most efficient types of processing architectures. The result is a wave of development for… Read More

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Low Power SRAM Complier and Characterization Enable IoT Applications

Low Power SRAM Complier and Characterization Enable IoT Applications
by Tom Simon on 02-22-2019 at 7:00 am
Categories: IoT, IP, sureCore

If you are designing an SOC for an IoT application and looking to minimize power consumption, there are a lot of choices. However, more often than not, looking at reducing SRAM power is a good place to start. SRAMs can consume up to 70% of an IC’s power. SureCore, a leading memory IP supplier, offers highly optimized SRAM instances … Read More

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SOC security is not a job for general purpose CPUs

SOC security is not a job for general purpose CPUs
by Tom Simon on 01-14-2019 at 7:00 am
Categories: Automotive, IoT, IP, Rambus, RISC-V, Security

Life is full of convenience-security tradeoffs. Sometimes these are explicit, where you get to make an active choice about how secure or insecure you want things to be. Other times we are unaware of the choices we are making, and how risky they are for the convenience provided. If you leave your bike unlocked, you can expect it to be… Read More

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Does the G in GDDR6 stand for Goldilocks?

Does the G in GDDR6 stand for Goldilocks?
by Tom Simon on 10-16-2018 at 12:00 pm
Categories: AI, Automotive, IP, Rambus

In the wake of TSMC’s recent Open Innovation Platform event, I spoke to Frank Ferro, Senior Director of Product Management at Rambus. His presentation on advanced memory interfaces for high-performance systems helped to shed some light on the evolution of system memory for leading edge applications. System implementers now… Read More

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Imec technology forum 2018 – the future of memory

Imec technology forum 2018 – the future of memory
by Scotten Jones on 06-05-2018 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Events, FinFET, Foundries
1 Comment

At the Imec technology forum in Belgium Gouri Sankar Kar and Arnaud Furnemont presented memory and storage perspectives and I also got to interview Arnaud. Arnaud leads overall memory development at Imec and personally leads NAND and DNA research.

Memory research is focused on power, energy, speed and cost with energy and throughput… Read More

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Artificial Intelligence calls for Smart Interconnect

Artificial Intelligence calls for Smart Interconnect
by Tom Simon on 04-18-2018 at 7:00 am
Categories: AI, EDA, IP, NetSpeed Systems

Artificial Intelligence based systems are driving a metamorphosis in computing, and consequently precipitating a large shift in SOC design. AI training is often done in the cloud and has requirements for handling huge amounts of data with forward and backward data connections. Inference usually occurs at the edge and must be… Read More

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SPI Inspires a New Generation of SOC Designs

SPI Inspires a New Generation of SOC Designs
by Tom Simon on 02-15-2018 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Events, IoT, Silvaco

When I started dabbling in hardware again for fun using Arduinos about five years ago, it had been a long time since I had played with microprocessor chips. The epiphany for me was seeing how easy it was to load programs onto the onboard flash on something like an Atmel AVR using the SPI interface. My previous experience decades early… Read More

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The perfect pairing of SOCs and embedded FPGA IP

The perfect pairing of SOCs and embedded FPGA IP
by Tom Simon on 10-30-2017 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Achronix, Events, FPGA, IP

In life, there are some things that just go together. Imagine the world without peanut butter and jelly, eggs and potatoes, telephones and voicemail, or the internet and search engines. In the world of computing there are many such examples – UARTS and FIFO’s, processor cores and GPU’s, etc. Another trait all these things have is… Read More

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Improved Memory Design, Characterization and Verification

Improved Memory Design, Characterization and Verification
by Daniel Payne on 09-19-2017 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Cadence, EDA, FinFET

My IC design career started out with DRAM design, characterization and verification back in the 1970’s, so I vividly recall how much SPICE circuit simulation was involved, and how little automation we had back in the day, so we tended to cobble together our own scripts to help automate the process a bit. With each new process… Read More

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HBM offers SOC’s dense and fast memory options

HBM offers SOC’s dense and fast memory options
by Tom Simon on 08-22-2017 at 7:00 am
Categories: IP, Synopsys

Dual in-line memory modules (DIMM’s ) with double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory (DDR SDRAM) have been around since before we were worried about Y2K. Over the intervening years this format for provisioning memory has evolved from supporting DDR around 1995, to DDR1 in 2000, DDR2 in 2003, DDR4 in 2007 and DDR4… Read More