RISC-V tends to generate excitement over the possibilities for the processor core, any custom instruction extensions, and its attached memory subsystem. Those are all necessary steps to obtaining system-level performance. But is that attention sufficient? Architects who have ventured into larger system-on-chip (SoC) … Read More
While Truechip has established itself as a global provider of verification IP (VIP) solutions, they are always on the lookout for strategic IP needs from their customer base. Over the last several years, a solid market for Network-on-Chip (NoC) IP has grown, driven by the need to rapidly move data across a chip. Concurrently, the… Read More
Driven by the need to rapidly move data across a chip, the NoC IP is already a very common structure for moving data with an SoC. And various implementations of the NoC IP are available in the market depending on the end system requirements. Over the last few years, the RISC-V architecture and the TileLink interface specification … Read More
The reason people love FPGAs for networking and communications applications is because they offer state of the art high speed interfaces and impressive parallel processing power. The problem is that typically a lot of the FPGA fabric resources are used simply to move the data on or off and across the chip. Achronix has cleverly … Read More
Smart network interface cards (SmartNICs) have proven themselves valuable in improving network efficiency. According to Scott Schweitzer, senior product manager at Achronix, it has been shown that SmartNICs can relieve up to – and perhaps beyond – 30% of the host processor’s loading. SmartNICs started out taking… Read More
When we think about Compute and AI SoCs, we often focus on the huge numbers of calculations being carried out every second, and the ingenious IPs that are able to reach such high levels of performance. However, there also exists a significant challenge in keeping the vast quantities of data flowing around the chip which is solved … Read More
The internet keeps adding users and connected devices. According to the numbers in a white paper from Achronix, by 2022 there will be 4.8 billion internet users and 28.5 billion connected devices. Internet traffic will reach 275 exabytes per month. Of this a staggering 83 percent will be video traffic. Moving the data from creators… Read More
To many of us, if we ever think about interconnect on an SoC, we may think delay, power consumption, congestion, that sort of thing. All important points from an implementation point of view, but what about the functional and system implications? In the early days, interconnect was very democratic, all wires more or less equal, … Read More
Block floating point (BFP) has been around for a while but is just now starting to be seen as a very useful technique for performing machine learning operations. It’s worth pointing out up front that bfloat is not the same thing. BFP combines the efficiency of fixed point operations and also offers the dynamic range of full floating… Read More
The conventional thinking about programmable solutions such as FPGAs is that you have to be willing to make a lot of trade-offs for their flexibility. This has certainly been the case in many instances. Even just getting data across the chip can eat up valuable routing resources and add a lot of overhead. These problems are exacerbated… Read More
