New approaches emerge as demand for improved power and performance overwhelm design tools.

The semiconductor ecosystem is at a turning point for how to best architect the CPU based on the explosion of data, the increased usage of AI, and the need for differentiation and customization in leading-edge applications.

In the past, much of this would have been accomplished by moving to the next process node. But with the benefits from…

As localized processors become more powerful, what works best where?

Increasing amounts of processing are being done on the edge, but how the balance will change between what’s computed in the cloud versus the edge remains unclear. The answer may depend as much on the value of data and other commercial reasons as on technical limitations.

The pendulum has been swinging between doing all processing in the cloud to doing…

What does it take to get a new language, tool, or methodology established in the semiconductor industry? Disruption has rarely worked.

Progress in semiconductors has been one of the most successful engineering feats, and the industry has ridden an exponential curve longer than anything else in history. It is also a highly conservative industry that has pushed away many disruptive changes in favor of small incremental changes…

The IC industry is struggling with blurring lines between different disciplines as chips are more tightly integrated with software in packages and systems.

Complexity in hardware design is spilling over to other disciplines, including software, manufacturing, and new materials, creating issues for how to model more data at multiple abstraction levels.

Challenges are growing around which abstraction level to use for a particular stage of the…

The open nature of the RISC-V means anyone can design a custom processor - moving the verification task from a few specialist suppliers to all SoC developers. This article looks at the industrial-grade verification and open methodology to support verification of an open-source CV32E40P core.

The amount of time, money and effort it takes to design a system-on-chip (SoC) means it is not surprising when engineering teams want to get it right first time. This long-held ideal…

RCR Wireless News – “Well, technically...” Podcast featuring Katherine (Kat) Hsu from Imperas Software.

Imperas Software's Senior Account Manager Katherine (Kat) Hsu discusses the biggest trends in the semiconductor industry, why consumers should care about AI processors and the technical challenges that open standard RISC-V helps…

Mind-boggling number of options emerge, but which is best often isn’t clear.

The guideposts for designing chips are disappearing or becoming less relevant. While engineers today have many more options for customizing a design, they have little direction about what works best for specific applications or what the return on investment will be for those efforts.
For chip architects, this is proving to be an embarrassment of riches.…

Demand for faster processing with increasingly diverse applications is prompting very different compute models.

Data centers are undergoing a fundamental change, shifting from standard processing models to more data-centric approaches based upon customized hardware, less movement of data, and more pooling of resources.
Driven by a flood of web searches, Bitcoin mining, video streaming, data centers are in a race to provide the most…

The design freedoms of RISC-V offer developers flexibility for innovation – now processor IP verification quality is also a flexible option.

The RISC-V open standard ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) offers developers the opportunity to configure the features and functions of a custom processor to uniquely address their target end application needs and requirements. RISC-V has a modular structure with…