Breaking the Limits of SoC Prototyping

Breaking the Limits of SoC Prototyping
by Pawan Fangaria on 11-17-2015 at 12:00 pm

Earlier this month during my conversation with Dr. Walden C. Rhines, he emphasised the need for our next generation designers to think at system level and design everything keeping the system’s view in mind. The verification will go through major transformation at the system level. I can see the FPGA prototyping systems already… Read More


Taking a Leap Forward to Prototype Billion Gate Designs

Taking a Leap Forward to Prototype Billion Gate Designs
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-26-2015 at 12:00 pm

It’s very common these days to hear about a billion gates SoC, but not without a huge design and verification effort and investment of resources. A complete verification of such an SoC needs several verification steps including software and hardware based methodologies that often are not sufficient to cover the whole SoC. In order… Read More


2015, the Year of the Sheep…And the 16nm FPGA

2015, the Year of the Sheep…And the 16nm FPGA
by Paul McLellan on 03-10-2015 at 7:00 am

If you live in California anyway, with its large Asian population, you can’t have helped noticing that it was the Lunar New Year a couple of weeks ago, the start of the year of the sheep. A couple of days after the New Year, Xilinx announced their new families of what they now call FPGAs, 3D ICs and MPSoCs. But which the rest of us … Read More


Xilinx, 100 Reasons to use them

Xilinx, 100 Reasons to use them
by Luke Miller on 08-04-2014 at 4:00 pm

We all like compliments, correct? You know the kind that go like, “Glad you didn’t screw that up”. From time to time I get, “You write what you do because you’re affiliated with Xilinx”. Perhaps I will name my next child Xilinx. I have said this before, I do real work (debatable) and trade studies,Read More


Xilinx KCU105 Evaluation board is key for your demo

Xilinx KCU105 Evaluation board is key for your demo
by Luke Miller on 06-16-2014 at 5:34 pm

I love God, my wife, kids, and FPGA boards. I know I am not alone, there are other nerds out there, don’t be shy. Friday my “Kintex® UltraScale™ FPGA KCU105 Evaluation Kit” came in. Think about this, this is real 20nm Xilinx FPGA hardware that really works. Below is a nice picture of all the swizzles the board has.

I believe this is the … Read More


Xilinx Showcases Worlds First ‘High Performance’ Analogue FPGA

Xilinx Showcases Worlds First ‘High Performance’ Analogue FPGA
by Luke Miller on 04-16-2014 at 7:00 am

Last February Xilinx presented a prototype device at the 2014 IEEE international Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC, titled “A Heterogeneous 3D-IC Consisting of Two 28nm FPGA Die and 32 Reconfigurable High-Performance Data Converters” and click here to get a copy of the paper. Let me just share the intro my dear reader… … Read More


Xilinx’s Mixed Signal FPGA

Xilinx’s Mixed Signal FPGA
by Luke Miller on 01-28-2014 at 10:00 am

Something in all the Xilinx chatter of UltraScale 20nm, 16nm, having massive amounts of Gigabit transceivers, DSP blocks, RAM, HLS, Rapid Design Closure gets lost… and that is Xilinx’s ability for Mixed Signals. I do not mean when you are talking with the wife (Remember Listen!), but a wonderful block that lives within… Read More


Get into a Xilinx FPGA for Under $90

Get into a Xilinx FPGA for Under $90
by Luke Miller on 12-27-2013 at 6:30 pm

Jump into Xilinx Programmable Logic today! I wanted to encourage my dear readers if you have not tried using an Xilinx FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) or even CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device) then it is worth your time to begin your evaluation. Maybe you got one for Christmas? If not, it is easier than you think to start… Read More


3D-IC Physical Design

3D-IC Physical Design
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-22-2012 at 10:00 am

When process nodes reached 28 nm and below, it appeared that design density is reaching a saturation point, hitting the limits of Moore’s law. I was of the opinion that the future of microelectronic physical design was limited to 20 and 14 nm being addressed by technological advances such as FinFETs, double patterning, HKMG (High-k… Read More