Articles tagged: 'network'
October 25, 2012
I was a bit frustrated this weekend after installing a digital light timer—yes a light timer. As an engineer this should be no big deal, and for the most part, I installed it without shocking myself or other major problems. This timer had all the bells and whistles. It knows about time zones, adjusts daily for dawn and dusk. It even adjusts for daylight savings time. The problem came when I tried to program this device. It took me two days to get it right (I actually had to read the instructions)! How did a very simple function like a switch become so complicated? I had a similar thought last week as discussions have intensified around the need for embedded consumer SoCs to support hardware cache coherency. How did connecting one core to another (a switch and router) become so complicated? Much of the discussion has been sparked with the recent introduction of the new ARM CCN-504 cache coherent interconnect. Although this IP is for high-end computing platforms, it is clear that these types of coherent networks will be needed for lower-performance applications also. It’s not that cache coherency is new in embedded SoCs. It has been used in computing clusters for some time now. Keeping memory coherency within the computing cluster, however, has been the problem of the CPU vendor only because it did not affect other memory transactions in the system. What is new is that other processors in the system (GPUs and DSPs) also will need coherent access to memory.
May 24, 2012
As Featured in: System-Level Design Community
With each passing month, the cloud is taking the semiconductor market by storm—just like it did in the enterprise years ago. Take nVidia’s recent Kepler GPU announcement for cloud computing. This device provides low-latency access to the cloud for gaming, giving gamers performance and access to the latest content without being tied to a game console. Another example is Applied Micro’s X-Gene new cloud DNA 64-bit ‘server-on-a chip’ for powering the cloud. From the system side, ”Apple puts iCloud at the heart of its OS,” expanding the cloud content to include more photo sharing capabilities and adding video sharing.
Another announcement that caught my eye was technology for thin clients. Although I have seen the concept of thin clients come and go, with all the content moving to the cloud, it does appear that there is a real opportunity to reduce client hardware costs and create a new category of desktop and mobile devices that can harness the computing power in the cloud. For the short term, I find it hard to imagine, with the impressive smart phone and tablet trajectories, that anyone (consumers in particular) would want to give up some of the ‘smarts’ in their smart devices. So for now, I see these thin clients being targeted for enterprise and perhaps some vertical applications.
April 26, 2012
As featured in: If you’re paying attention and/or using a smart phone every day (and perhaps it’s safer to assume the latter) the ‘cloud’ is no longer a buzzword. The cloud has become grounded in our daily reality. How’s that for a paradox and a visual? But at a minimum, it has become more like …
September 26, 2011
System-Level Design recently interviewed Sonics CEO, Grant Pierce, about the future SoC design.