Arteris on a winning streak in 2014

Arteris on a winning streak in 2014
by Don Dingee on 11-19-2014 at 3:00 am

When Arteris sold key network-on-chip intellectual property and most of its human assets to Qualcomm earlier this year, it was big news. We suggested the bigger news after a restaffing effort would be a next-generation NoC release, and a new round of design wins.

Some developments were already in the pipeline. … Read More


NoC 101, a Sonics Webinar

NoC 101, a Sonics Webinar
by Paul McLellan on 11-13-2014 at 7:00 am

One of the things that I’ve been telling the people at Sonics when they will listen is that they should do a bit more basic education on Networks on Chip (NoC). Sure, the people who actually use Sonics’s products care about deep details such as security and power management, but there is a whole host of designers who have… Read More


NoC resilience protects end-to-end

NoC resilience protects end-to-end
by Don Dingee on 10-13-2014 at 4:00 pm

Protecting memory with ECC but leaving the rest of an SoC uncovered is like having a guard dog chained up in the back corner of your yard. If the problem happens to be in that particular spot, it’ll be dealt with, otherwise there will be a lot of barking but little actual protection.

Similarly, adding a safety-capable processor like… Read More


Safer SoCs for safer driving

Safer SoCs for safer driving
by Don Dingee on 09-14-2014 at 4:00 pm

Flip on the TV, and a car commercial is bound to pop up shortly touting one of two technological aspects. One is center stack integration of smartphone-style applications. The other is advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) featuring cameras, radar, and other sensors helping cars … Read More


New details on Altera network-on-FPGA

New details on Altera network-on-FPGA
by Don Dingee on 08-28-2014 at 4:00 pm

Advantages to using NoCs in SoC design are well documented: reduced routing congestion, better performance than crossbars, improved optimization and reuse of IP, strategies for system power management, and so on. What happens when NoCs move into FPGAs, or more accurately the SoC variant combining ARM cores with programmable… Read More


NoCs for system-level power management

NoCs for system-level power management
by Don Dingee on 07-23-2014 at 7:00 am

Most of the buzz on network-on-chip is around simplifying and scaling interconnect, especially in multicore SoCs where AMBA buses and crossbars run into issues as more and more cores enter a design. Designers may want to explore how NoCs can help with a more power-aware approach.… Read More


Improve Your Memory the Sonics Way

Improve Your Memory the Sonics Way
by Paul McLellan on 07-22-2014 at 7:00 am

There is never enough memory bandwidth. Well, occasionally there is but many SoCs have lots of blocks that communicate through memory, typically off-chip DRAM. In 2001 Sonics created their first solution to this problem with MemMax technology that was incorporated into their SonicsSX product. This has been used in over 100 designs… Read More


Sonics and Qualcomm Make a Deal

Sonics and Qualcomm Make a Deal
by Paul McLellan on 07-06-2014 at 9:00 am

Some background. Sonics has been in the network-on-chip (NoC) business for a long time. Nearly 18 years years. When Arteris launched their products, Sonics figured Arteris were infringing Sonics’s patents and in 2011 brought a complaint against them. Details are here. Arteris looked at a couple of their own patents (if… Read More


A song of optimization and reuse

A song of optimization and reuse
by Don Dingee on 07-01-2014 at 10:00 am

If you hang around engineers for any time at all, the word optimization is bound to come up. The very definition of engineer is to contrive or devise a solution. With that anointing, most engineers are beholden to the idea that their job is creating, synthesizing, and perfecting a solution specifically for the needs of a unique situation.… Read More


Sensor clusters at edge call for NoCs nearby

Sensor clusters at edge call for NoCs nearby
by Don Dingee on 04-17-2014 at 6:30 pm

In his recent blog on EETimes, Kurt Shuler of Arteris took a whimsical look at the hype surrounding the IoT, questioning the overall absence of practicality and a seemingly misplaced focus on use cases at the expense of a coherent architecture. I don’t think it is all that bleak, but when it comes to architecture, Kurt is right, and… Read More