Articles – Page 541

April 1, 2008

In the old days, we had only two kinds of FPGA – small and smaller, also known as slow and slower, or hot and hotter… The technology was useful for a few high-value applications, but it was limited on all three fronts – density (cost), speed, and power — from attacking a much broader market. As we waltzed along the to the three-count meter of Moore’s Law, all three critical parameters improved. Density went up, frequency got faster, power cooled down, and people got happier.

After a few rounds, however, FPGAs had pretty … Read More → "Tools and Transceivers"

As Easy As Pie

by Bryon Moyer

April 1, 2008

ANNOUNCER: It’s spring, the harvest is and holidays are behind us, and the apples in cold storage are starting to age. Someone needs to come to their rescue before it’s too late. And that can mean only one thing here in Kitchen Stadium: it’s Time for Pie. So today’s challenge will be an homage to Mom’s apple pie.

But things are going to work a little differently this time out. Instead of a challenger taking on one of the Iron Chefs, five Iron … Read More → "As Easy As Pie"

MIPS Moves on Multi-Core

MIPS32 1004K

by Kevin Morris

April 1, 2008

At first, the concept of “multi-core” from a processor IP company might seem a bit confusing. Couldn’t we already put multiple MIPS cores on our devices? If your concept of multi-core ends with putting more than one processor on a chip, you may not be yet dialed into the subtleties.

This week, MIPS launched their highest-performance solution ever with the new MIPS32 1004K “Coherent Processing System” – a multi-core, multi-threaded IP solution. The challenge of keeping all your cores busy in a symmetric multi-processing (SMP) system is actually … Read More → "MIPS Moves on Multi-Core"

Bigger and Better Storage

by Bryon Moyer

March 25, 2008

Last week’s ISSCC and DesignCon conferences included presentations of developments in non-volatile memory, and we present some highlights here. Some of the papers discussed developments in novel cell types; others addressed improvements in more well-adopted technologies. So first let’s review the different kinds of non-volatile cells being covered to set some context.

The lives of a cell

Flash is the best known of the technologies; it’s the one that the least technically savvy of us might actually go out and buy … Read More → "Bigger and Better Storage"

ISSCC Processor Fest

by Bryon Moyer

March 25, 2008

There are some places it seems everyone wants to be. The Oscars. An inaugural ball. Mardi Gras. New Years in Times Square. (OK, pre-War on Terror.) Well there was a new member of this list a while back that might not have sprung to mind immediately: the microprocessor session at ISSCC, packed to the gills. Four new processors were presented, plus one process migration to 45 nm. The bragging rights on such chips are typically all about performance (or performance efficiency), and everyone fusses over clock rates and bus sizes and various and sundry other numbers, but, in … Read More → "ISSCC Processor Fest"

Synthesis Flows Back to the Sea

Synopsys Buys Synplicity

by Kevin Morris

March 25, 2008

The sun’s rays beat down on the sea, vaporizing seawater and lifting molecules into the sky. Adiabatic processes work their magic, and soon tiny bits of moisture are carried eastward for their date with landfall. It isn’t clear how long it will take them to complete their round-trip journey back to the ocean, or what they’ll encounter and accomplish along the way.

Graduate student Edward McCluskey sits in his lab at MIT documenting a logic minimization procedure that will give life to the idea of optimizing logic designs in … Read More → "Synthesis Flows Back to the Sea"

Bringing Reality to PCB Design

by Dick Selwood

March 25, 2008

In a fundamental shift that redefined how products are created, the transition of engineering design from manual drafting-based methodologies to Computer-aided Design has transformed design in virtually all branches of engineering. The application of CAD in the electronics industry is no exception, and has revolutionized the way engineers work and the products that can be developed. You won’t find too many engineers that would be willing to go back to the old methods.

What you would be going back to is laying out strips of tape and sticking graphics shapes on a flat sheet to … Read More → "Bringing Reality to PCB Design"

Embedded World

by Dick Selwood

March 25, 2008

Embedded world was always big. Now it is enormous. Nearly 700 companies were exhibiting there this year (twice the number booked for ESC in San Jose next month), with over 17,000 visitors. Just think – if I spent half an hour talking to each exhibitor, and that is a journalist’s schedule for an average interview, allowing for 40 hour weeks, and not including lunch, coffee and comfort break, it would take nearly nine weeks just to meet everyone. Nor does that include the press conferences, which normally demand an hour of attention, nor the conference that ran for … Read More → "Embedded World"

Migrating Complex Networking ASIC Verification Environment to SystemC and SystemVerilog

by Bryon Moyer

March 18, 2008

Introduction

As the computer hardware industry strives to obey Moore’s Law, the telecommunication industry is following the even more rapid phenomena as described by Metcalfe’s Law: the potential number of contacts between each end computer increases rapidly, the effort to reduce the congestion at the network layer is greatly contributing to today’s system-on-chip (SoC) complexity. As more and more optimizations are added to the upper layer protocols, low layer complexity increases to facilitate overall system feasibility. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in … Read More → "Migrating Complex Networking ASIC Verification Environment to SystemC and SystemVerilog"

When Being One-Dimensional Is A Good Thing

Tela Innovations Announces Their Approach to Advanced Cell Layout

by Bryon Moyer

March 18, 2008

Driving in the country and in the city are completely different experiences. In the country, there’s so little traffic that you really don’t need much in the way of rules. Roads intersect, maybe with a stop sign, maybe not; it’s expected that you will look as you approach and proceed with caution (unless you’re the Dukes of Hazzard). If people start moving into the area and the traffic gets busier, then at least one of the intersecting roads will need a stop sign to avoid outright chaos. If things … Read More → "When Being One-Dimensional Is A Good Thing"