Guest Blogs

• FPGA designers turn to machine learning in the cloud

  Kirvy Teo, Pulnify

  Even with all the attention focused on mobile-device apps for everything from ride sharing and Instagram to music streaming, the semiconductor industry still holds sway for passionate engineers who want to make a difference – even if the application is far removed from the consumer experience. One such example involves a couple of savvy engineers [...]

• Why modern SoC designs embrace emulation

  Jean-Marie Brunet, Marketing Director (Emulation Division), Mentor Graphics

  If there is a single largest factor that has driven the evolution of hardware emulation as a primary verification tool, it is system-on-chip (SoC) design. These designs continue to grow in size and functionality and require more IP and interfaces. Emulation technology also caters to the entire SoC development cycle by testing the hardware properties [...]

• Biggest security threats for embedded designers

  Ted Marena, Microsemi Corp.

  Embedded system designers face a number of threats to the applications that they develop for the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the biggest threats comes from IoT devices that end-users can access, such as commercial networked HVAC systems, wireless base stations, power stations, network gateway systems, and avionics networking. Another example is the connected car, including the [...]

• In-lab FPGA verification is here to stay

  Frederic Leens, Byte Paradigm

  I remotely attended the Verification Futures conference, organized by TVS in the UK (you can find the slides on their web site) where NMI’s Doug Amos presented the results of a survey conducted in 2014 about FPGA usage in the UK and Ireland. One aspect that struck me is that the most commonly used FPGA [...]

• Agile for hardware development

  Mike Bartley, Test and Verification Solutions (TVS)

  Agile was a strong theme at recent Verification Futures conference, with a number of speakers discussing how they have introduced continuous integration. In 2012 at IP-SOC, I asked “Are we too hard for agile?” Here, I’ll consider how things have changed in the past two years. First, “agile” is a catch-all to describe a wide [...]

• FPGAs provide better beamforming performance

  Jason Cella, 4DSP LLC

  As signal processing in radar and wireless communications systems has shifted from analog to digital, great effort has gone into the development of advanced beamforming techniques to enable new applications. The ability to precisely guide beams using digital methods, the most common being fast Fourier transform (FFT), has resulted in significant changes in how radar [...]

• Encrypting communications

  Paul Dillien, Algotronix Ltd.

  During the Afghanistan conflict, it was widely reported that insurgents were intercepting and displaying the unencrypted video feeds from UAVs using inexpensive software sourced from the web. This shocking revelation suggests that adding an encryption capability is a difficult task, but in reality, it needn’t be. Data encryption is an obvious benefit for UAVs, along [...]

• Welcome to the Ultra-class zetta FPGA era

  Leonard D., So Logic Cal

  It’s time once again for another technology jump. Xilinx just announced tapeout of their new “UltraScale ASIC class” ICs. I’m not sure what that means, but it sure sounds fancy. Why not just “superscale”? This year will be an “ultra” year for Xilinx. The tools are said to be ultra fast as well. The design [...]

• Scalable design style using SystemVerilog for FPGA designers

  Srinivasan Venkataramanan, Chief Technology Officer, CVC Pvt. Ltd.

  Given the trends in FPGA devices, many of the previous generation ASICs can easily be accommodated in modern-day FPGAs. Moreover, even the new ASIC design teams are first exploring doing an FPGA prototype and then doing an ASIC. The FPGA community is becoming more vibrant than ever before thanks to all the technology advancements, tools, [...]

• Where is my $2 FPGA?

  Leonard D., So Logic Cal

  Ever since FPGA companies broke the .2 micron barrier we've been led to believe that gates are free, so use them – FPGAs will take over the world. Today FPGA leaders like Altera and Xilinx are leading the path to 28 nm and beyond. You have oceans of gates that are cheaper than ever, but small embedded microcontrollers can still be a quarter the cost. When compared to an Atmel AVR or Microchip dsPIC, even the smallest of the low-cost FPGA have a hard time competing against them in price and functions.