10 signs on the neural-net-based ADAS road

10 signs on the neural-net-based ADAS road
by Don Dingee on 06-24-2016 at 12:00 pm

Every day I read stuff about the coming of fully autonomous vehicles, and it’s not every day we get a technologist’s view of the hurdles faced in getting there. Chris Rowen, CTO of Cadence’s IP group, gave one of the best presentations I’ve seen on ADAS technology and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) at #53DAC, pointing… Read More


Cadence loads up on MACs for vision with CNNs

Cadence loads up on MACs for vision with CNNs
by Don Dingee on 05-02-2016 at 4:00 pm

For vision DSP IP running convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a big driver of performance is increasing the bits processed per cycle with parallel MACs. Tom Simon did a great job in recent posts of introducing CNNs at a high level, so I’ll look at what is architecturally behind Cadence’s latest announcement: the Tensilica Vision… Read More


Neural Networks Poised to Make Big Changes in Our World

Neural Networks Poised to Make Big Changes in Our World
by Tom Simon on 04-11-2016 at 12:00 pm

Probably the most interesting thing about Neural Networks is how they can be used for complex recognition tasks that we as people can easily perform but we might have a lot of trouble explaining how. One very good example of a problem that Neural Networks can tackle is determining when people are making a fake smile. Intuitively we… Read More


Neural Networks Ready for Embedded Platforms

Neural Networks Ready for Embedded Platforms
by Tom Simon on 02-24-2016 at 7:00 am

If you are not yet familiar with the term Convolutional Neural Networks, or CNN for short, you are certainly bound to become in the year ahead. Using Artificial Intelligence in the form of CNN is on the verge of replacing a large number of computing tasks, especially those involving recognizing things such as sounds, shapes, objects,… Read More


Is This a Dagger Which I See Before Me?

Is This a Dagger Which I See Before Me?
by Bernard Murphy on 10-29-2015 at 4:00 pm

Macbeth may have been uncertain of what he saw but, until recently, image recognition systems would have fared even less well. The energy and innovation put into increasingly complex algorithms always seemed to fall short of what any animal (including us humans) is able to do without effort. Machine vision algorithms have especially… Read More


Xtensa core in Qualcomm low-power Wi-Fi

Xtensa core in Qualcomm low-power Wi-Fi
by Don Dingee on 08-31-2015 at 4:00 pm

Wi-Fi has this reputation as being a power hog. It takes a relatively big processor to run at full throughput. It is always transmitting all over the place, and it isn’t very efficient at doing it. Most of those preconceived notions arose from older chips targeting the primary use case for Wi-Fi in enterprise and residential environments.… Read More


SemiWiki at #52DAC: Nominated for Best Paper Award!

SemiWiki at #52DAC: Nominated for Best Paper Award!
by Eric Esteve on 05-18-2015 at 7:00 pm

Blogging for Semiwiki is a very good exercise to prepare a paper submission at DAC. Writing a short article using about 600 words to pass one message, and try to deliver this message as clearly as possible. Writing a paper for DAC is very similar, as you have to be synthetic and develop a thesis in 5 slides, no more, as it’s a time limited… Read More


Customizable IP for HP and LP Audio Subsystems

Customizable IP for HP and LP Audio Subsystems
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-15-2015 at 4:00 am

Today, Smartphones and mobile devices have become center of innovation with multiple functions getting into them. Considering the audio or voice application, there can be multi-way conferencing, video chat, complete audio/video streaming, gaming, voice triggering and recognition,… you name an application, and it will … Read More


Embedded Vision Summit

Embedded Vision Summit
by Paul McLellan on 06-05-2014 at 2:32 pm

I was a the embedded vision conference last week. Jeff Beir, the founder of the embedded vision alliance gave an introduction to the field. The conference was much bigger than previous years and almost everyone is designing some sort of vision product. Half of your brain is used for vision so it goes without saying that vision requires… Read More


Cadence is all about Semiconductor IP!

Cadence is all about Semiconductor IP!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-16-2014 at 9:00 am

Cadence continues on its quest to be a top semiconductor IP supplier which is a good thing since the semiconductor world now revolves around IP. Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan mentioned IP 14 times during his keynote and he was followed by the president of Imagination Technologies and the CEO of recently acquired Tensilica. I was not afforded… Read More