We have had the Snowden revelations that the NSA has gone rogue, Target lost a zillion credit cards, the Heartbleed bug meaning that main security protocol of the internet had been coded up wrong for a couple of years, theft of records from RSA and more. One result is that people do not completely trust a security system that depends… Read More
Tag: sonics
Sonics Performance Monitor and Hardware Trace
As SoCs have got more complex, and with a larger and larger software content, it is no longer good enough to just monitor how the design behaves using simulation and then completely forget about it once the design is complete. What is required is the capability to monitor the design in real time (in silicon or FPGA) to see how it is behaving.… Read More
Power Control Moving into Hardware
Sonics have been building networks-on-chips (NoCs) for a long time and have amassed a rich patent portfolio. So being granted a new one isn’t usually deemed press-release-worthy. However, their latest patent on power management is pretty significant. It is patent 8,601,288 titled “Intelligent Power Controller”.
Historically… Read More
How Do You Verify a NoC?
Networks-on-chip (NoCs) are very configurable, arguably the most configurable piece of IP that you can put on a chip. The only thing that comes close are highly configurable extensible VLIW processors such as those from Tensilica (Cadence), ARC (Synopsys) and CEVA but Sonics would argue their NoCs are even more flexible. But … Read More
Wearables the Big Hit at CES
There were a number of trends discernible at CES this year, one of the big ones being wearables, especially in the medical and fitness areas. I wear a FitBit Flex and I have, but rarely wear, a Pebble Watch that links to my iPhone. I would say that at this point they are promising but are more gimmicks than truly useful. My Fitbit measures… Read More
NoC, NoC: Your Chip May Be Under Attack
SoCs face a lot of issues related to security and the Network-on-Chip (NoC) is in a good position to facilitate system-wide services. SoCs are now so complex that one of the challenges is to make sure that the chip does what it is meant to do and doesn’t do what it isn’t meant to do. Just as in software, security used to be … Read More
5 Rules of Power Management Using NoCs
If it has escaped your notice that power management on SoCs is important then you need to get out more. Increasingly, the complexity of the interconnect between the various processors, memories, offload processors, devices, interfaces and other blocks means that the best way to implement it is to use a network on chip (NoC). But… Read More
Open Letter from Sonics to Arteris
I don’t remember seeing an open letter from one EDA or IP company to another until today. Sonics have published an open letter to Charlie Janac, the CEO of Arteris. What seems to have happened is that Arteris have sold their assets to Qualcomm and the development team (which is based in France) and several AEs are already Qualcomm… Read More
Let’s comment… a comment from Sonics (about Arteris)
We still don’t know the precise status about a potential acquisition of Arteris by Qualcomm, and I prefer not to comment a rumor and wait for the official announcement, if any. But I would like to comment … a comment about this rumor, recently made by Sonics. This comment has taken the form of an Open Letter, from “Grant Pierce, CEO of… Read More
Qualcomm start selling DSP IP core?…
In recent times semiconductor companies have revealed their intentions to license their in-house processor architectures for the first time – IBM want to license their Power CPU architecture, nVidia to license their GPU architecture. Most recently, a rumor has surfed: Qualcomm will license their DSP architecture. We should… Read More