Articles – Page 129

March 19, 2018

“How to validate training data is an open question that might be addressed by some combination of characterizing the data as well as the data generation or data collection process.”
‘Challenges in Autonomous Vehicle Testing and Validation’, Koopman and Wagner, 2016

Last summer, we published a piece on safety-critical capabilities in EDA. But we left an open, unanswered question at the end: how do you validate a model created by machine learning (ML)? It wasn’t a trivial topic at the time, … Read More → "When Lives Depend on Your Machine-Learned Model"

Decoding Silicon Valley

Distilling the Magical Essence of a Non-Magical Place

by Steven Leibson

March 15, 2018

“Silicon Valley is not a magical place, but magical things happen there.” – Jonathan C. Baer

Earlier this week, more than 100 engineering consultants, a few marketers, and four mad scientists (self-proclaimed “consulting physicists”) met under the auspices of the IEEE-CNSV—that’s the Consultants’ Network of Silicon Valley—to schmooze, eat Stuft pizza, and hear serial entrepreneur Michelle Messina and recovering venture capitalist Jonathan Baer distill the essence of their book, “Decoding Silicon Valley: The Insiders … Read More → "Decoding Silicon Valley"

Mentor Spackles Over Cracks in the Cloud

Embedded IoT Framework Fills Software Holes

by Jim Turley

March 14, 2018

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” – Robert Browning

We’re a long way from the clouds. Well, unless you’re an astronaut, in which case, you’re a long way above them. But for us earthbound engineers, “the cloud” can be a very long reach.

The Azure sky, as it were, seems so approachable at first. Amazon Web Services, IBM Watson, Google Cloud Platform, and the various and multitudinous cloud providers all make … Read More → "Mentor Spackles Over Cracks in the Cloud"

Xilinx Strikes Back – Kinda

New High-Speed PAM4 SerDes at 112 Gbps and 58 Gbps

by Kevin Morris

March 13, 2018

This week, Xilinx hit us with a duo of SerDes-related announcements – a demonstration of 112G PAM4 electrical signaling technology for optical networks, and the addition of 58G PAM4 transceivers to some of their 16nm Virtex® UltraScale+™ devices. The announcements were made at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Expo (OFC 2018), where Xilinx demonstrated what they claim are the industry’s first 112G PAM4 transceivers. (We think they mean “first FPGA devices with 112 Gbps transceivers,” as other companies have certainly already demonstrated SerDes at those speeds.) While 112 Gbps is definitely mind-bogglingly impressive, we won’t be seeing it in production … Read More → "Xilinx Strikes Back – Kinda"

Life at 10nm. (Or is it 7nm?) And 3nm

Views on Advanced Silicon Platforms

by Bryon Moyer

March 12, 2018

There’s a saying: “Everything stays the same until it changes.” Well, perhaps we need a slightly modified version of this for semiconductors: “Everything stays the same until it has to change.”

OK, so that’s probably not something exclusive to chips – because of a related saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In other words, change only those things that are preventing you from achieving some goal. Like printing features of the size needed for some process node.

Today we’re going to look at a couple of papers plus an … Read More → "Life at 10nm. (Or is it 7nm?) And 3nm"

A New Kind of Flexible Device

Brewer Science Prints its Fast-Turnaround Sensor Chips

by Jim Turley

March 8, 2018

“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” – Mark Twain

One thing we know for sure about semiconductor chips is that they’re really, really, really expensive to manufacture. We’re talking space-program levels of money. It costs many billions of dollars to build a new semiconductor fab, not to mention the acre-feet of water, chemicals, materials, and manpower needed to keep it running.

That’s one of the funny paradoxes of this business: it’s galactically expensive to build a chip-making plant, but the chips themselves are ridiculously … Read More → "A New Kind of Flexible Device"

Microchip, Microsemi, (and Atmel, and Actel)

Imagine the Possibilities

by Kevin Morris

March 7, 2018

Generally, we regard major semiconductor mergers as bad ideas. Usually, a big, clunky, non-differentiated technology conglomerate sitting on a pile of loot from some near-obsolete cash-cow chip lines wants to use some of that money to vacuum up some innovation for themselves. They show up at the doorstep of a faster-paced, better-managed, more innovative firm with a bag of filthy lucre, and use that to bludgeon down the door. The result is usually a quick enrichment of the chief executive, an exodus of key technologists and engineering talent from the acquired company, and the beginning of the gradual atrophy … Read More → "Microchip, Microsemi, (and Atmel, and Actel)"

Audio Processing Evolves Like Chip Design

New Ways to Do Faster Audio Design

by Bryon Moyer

March 5, 2018

There seems to be a natural progression in our industry. It happened before, more slowly, with basic chip design; now that the concept is well established, it can happen more easily elsewhere.

We’re talking about ways to speed up the design process when designing… well, pretty much anything. But the process arose out of the semiconductor industry as we tried to build bigger and better chips more quickly.

Three-Step Program

The first step is tools. Simple tools at first, … Read More → "Audio Processing Evolves Like Chip Design"

GreenWaves Puts Another Spin on IoT Chips

Nine-core GAP8 Processor Brings Low Power to Machine Learning

by Jim Turley

February 28, 2018

“If reason were fashionable, you would all have reason.” – Fanny de Beauharnais

Five bucks and nine processor cores. That’s the takeaway from GreenWaves’ new GAP8 processor chip.

Oh, and its low power consumption, measured in nanoamps. And parallel-programming tools. And convolutional neural net (CNN) acceleration. And an Arduino-esque development board. That about covers it.

GreenWaves is a 16-person startup with headquarters outside scenic Grenoble, France. Their first (and so far, only) product is GAP8, a microcontroller intended … Read More → "GreenWaves Puts Another Spin on IoT Chips"

Intel FPGA Hits its Stride

58 Gbps SerDes and HBM2

by Kevin Morris

February 27, 2018

Any time a company goes through a major acquisition, there is a period of slowdown and uncertainty. Organizational and cultural norms are stirred into a boiling cauldron of corporate chaos, org charts are pruned and rebuilt, goals are reset, and inevitably projects and products are delayed. In the worst cases, entire product lines and customer bases can be lost. In the best cases, things are a bit shaky and slow for awhile before the newly integrated organization hits its stride.

The Intel acquisition of Altera seems to be hitting its stride.

Over the backdrop of … Read More → "Intel FPGA Hits its Stride"