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Arm Flexible Access gives chip designers the freedom to experiment and test before they invest

Wed, Jul 17, 2019

Arm announced today it is expanding the ways existing and new partners can access and license its technology for semiconductor design. Arm Flexible Access is a new engagement model enabling SoC design teams to initiate projects before they license IP and pay only for what they use at production. Through Arm Flexible Access, businesses will enable their design teams with more freedom to experiment, evaluate and innovate.

“Arm Flexible Access was created to address the opportunities presented by a world of one trillion securely connected devices,” said Rene Haas, president, Intellectual Property Group, Arm. “By converging unlimited design access with no up-front licensing commitment, we are empowering existing partners and new market players to address new growth opportunities in IoT, machine learning, self-driving cars and 5G.”

Several partners, including AlphaICs, Invecas and Nordic Semiconductor, have signed on to this new Arm engagement model and already have access to a wide range of IP products, support tools and training. Arm Flexible Access complements standard Arm licensing which will continue to be the best option for partners seeking access to Arm’s full product portfolio and most advanced IP. A detailed comparison of the latest Arm engagement models can be found here.

Typically, partners license individual components from Arm and pay a license fee upfront before they can access the technology. With Arm Flexible Access they pay a modest fee for immediate access to a broad portfolio of technology, then paying a license fee only when they commit to manufacturing, followed by royalties for each unit shipped. This portfolio includes all the essential Intellectual Property (IP) and tools needed for an SoC design, making it easier to evaluate or prototype with multiple IP blocks before committing to licenses.

IP available through Arm Flexible Access includes the majority of Arm-based processors within the Arm® Cortex®-A, -R and -M families. These CPUs accounted for 75 percent of all Cortex CPU licenses signed over the last two years. It also includes Arm TrustZone and CryptoCell security IP, select Mali GPUs, system IP alongside tools and models for SoC design and early software development. Access to Arm’s global support and training services are also included.

A full list of the Arm IP available through Arm Flexible Access can be found here.

You can read more about Arm Flexible Access in this blog from Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager of Arm’s automotive and IoT business.

Partner quotes:

“Nordic’s range of advanced wireless products has expanded significantly in recent years in line with the rapid pace of innovation and new standards. With diverse markets and a broad line of products we need the ability to select exactly the right foundational processor, security technology and other important features for every project. Freely selecting what we need and then paying only for what we use through Arm Flexible Access will enable us to deliver the right solution every time. “

Trond Sæther, Director IPR, Nordic Semiconductor

“INVECAS works with an incredibly diverse set of customers from across the globe – Arm Flexible Access will help us meet the needs of those customers by combining proven Arm processor & system IP with our own silicon proven Interface IP and develop the optimal ASIC Design Solution for our customers.”

Mr. Dasaradha R. Gude, CEO, Invecas

“We are working on several products to address AI use cases in automotive, IoT gateways and edge computing. For this, we need access to a wide range of IP and the ability to rapidly evaluate, prototype and design. Arm’s Flexible Access model gives us that agile approach to IP for the first time.”

Nagendra Nagaraja, CEO, AlphaICs

“The rapidly progressing Artificial Intelligence space requires our team to stay ahead of our customer’s needs. Arm Flexible Access enables us to incorporate the right Arm CPU in Quadric’s Edge SOC to deliver real-time computing on edge devices. We are excited to be an early adopter.”

Veerbhan Kheterpal, CEO & Cofounder, Quadric.io.

“As a leading ASIC supplier our customers are demanding a wider range of innovative solutions in increasingly shorter timeframes, driven by emerging trends such as automotive and industrial IoT. In a competitive landscape, we need to deliver these solutions as quickly as possible, and Arm Flexible Access offers clear, transparent pricing where we only pay for what we use, enabling us to meet this demand.”

Mr. Gen Sasaki, Officer and Senior General Manager, Megachips

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Research indicates Pohoiki Beach chip for neural-inspired algortithms

Tue, Jul 16, 2019

An eight million neuron system, comprised of 64 Phokiki Beach chips, the codename for Loihi chips, is now available to the research community. The neuromorphic system will allow researchers to experiment with Lohi, Intel’s brain-inspired research chip, which applies the principles found in biological brains to computer architectures. Loihi enables users to process information up to 1,000 times faster and 10,000 times more efficiently than CPUs for specialised applications like sparse coding, graph search and constraint-satisfaction problems.

The early results success has led Intel to make Pohoiki Beach available to over 60 ecosystem partners, who will use the system to solve complex, compute-intensive problems, explained Rich Uhlig, managing director of Intel Labs.

Availability means researchers can now efficiently scale up neural-inspired algorithms — such as sparse coding, simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), and path planning — that can learn and adapt based on data inputs.

Intel Labs hopes to scale the architecture to 100 million neurons later this year.

As new complex computing workloads become the norm, there is a growing need for specialised architectures designed for specific applications. This will be achieved by continued process node scaling in the same vein as the power-performance increases achieved by Moore’s Law.

Using the Pohoiki Beach neuromorphic system rather than general purpose computing technologies, Intel hopes to realise gains in speed and efficiency in autonomous vehicles, smart homes and cybersecurity.

“With the Loihi chip we’ve been able to demonstrate 109 times lower power consumption running a real-time deep learning benchmark, compared to a [graphics processor unit] GPU, and five times lower power consumption compared to specialised IoT inference hardware,” said Chris Eliasmith, co-CEO of Applied Brain Research and professor at University of Waterloo. He continued: “As we scale the network up by 50 times, Loihi maintains real-time performance results and uses only 30 per cent more power, whereas the IoT hardware uses 500 per cent more power and is no longer real-time.”

In another research project, Loihi has been used in a neural network that imitates the brain’s underlying neural representations and behaviour. “The SLAM solution emerged as a property of the network’s structure,” explained Konstantinos Michmizos of Rutgers University. “We benchmarked the Loihi-run network and found it to be equally accurate while consuming 100 times less energy than a widely used CPU-run SLAM method for mobile robots,” he said.

Later this year, Intel will introduce an even larger Loihi system, named Pohoiki Springs. Intel’s engineers expect that measurements from these research systems will quantify the gains that are achievable with neuromorphic-computing methods and will clarify the application areas most suitable for the technology. This research paves the way for the eventual commercialisation of neuromorphic technology.

The Intel’s Nahuku boards pictured each contain eight to 32 Intel Loihi neuromorphic chips, interfaced to an Intel Arria 10 FPGA development kit.

(Credit: Tim Herman/Intel Corporation)

http://www.intel.com

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Microchip adds FPGAs and IP to smart embedded vision initiative

Tue, Jul 16, 2019

Microchip has added low-power PolarFire FPGAs with enhanced high-speed imaging interfaces, an intellectual property (IP) bundle for image processing to its Smart Embedded Vision initiative.

FPGAs are increasingly popular in vision-based systems, for their high bandwidth processing capabilities in intelligent systems deployed in small form factors with tight thermal and power constraints.

The Smart Embedded Vision initiative provides a suite of FPGA offerings that includes IP, hardware and tools for low-power, small form factor machine vision designs across the industrial, medical, broadcast, automotive, aerospace and defence markets.

The initiative includes a serial digital interface (SDI) IP which is used to transport uncompressed video data streams over coaxial cabling. The interface is available in multiple speeds: HD-SDI (1.485Gbits per second, 720p, 1080i), 3G-SDI (2.970Gbits per second, 1080p60), 6G-SDI (5.94Gbits per second, 2Kp30) and 12G-SDI (11.88 Gbits per second, 2Kp60).

A MIPI-CSI-2 IP, operating at 1.5Gbits per second per lane is a sensor interface that links image sensors to FPGAs. The PolarFire family supports receive speeds up to 1.5Gbits per second per lane and transmit speeds up to 1Gbits per second per lane.

There is also an image sensor interface IP. The 2.3Gbits per second per lane SLVS-EC Rx – SLVS-EC Rx supports high-resolution cameras. Customers can implement a two-lane or eight-lane SLVS-EC Rx FPGA core.

Microsemi’sPolarFire family can support one, 2.5, five and 10Gbits per second speeds over an Ethernet PHY, enabling the initiative to meet the need for Universal Serial 10GE Media Independent Interface (USXGMII) MAC IP with auto-negotiation.

CoaXPress is a standard used in high- performance machine vision, medical and in industrial inspection. Microchip will support CoaXPress v2.0, which doubles the bandwidth to 12.5Gbits per second.

The HDMI 2.0b IP core today supports resolutions up to 4K at 60 frames per second transmit and 1080p at 60 frames per second receive.

The PolarFire FPGA imaging IP bundle features the MIPI-CSI-2 and includes image processing IPs for edge detection, alpha blending and image enhancement for colour, brightness and contrast adjustments.

A new ecosystem partner is Kaya Instruments, which provides PolarFire FPGA IP Cores for CoaXPress v2.0 and 10 GigE vision. The ecosystem also includes Alma Technology, Bitec and artificial intelligence partner ASIC Design Services, which provides a Core Deep Learning (CDL) framework that enables a power-efficient convolutional neural network (CNN)-based imaging and video platform for embedded and edge computing applications.

All Smart Embedded Vision solutions are supported by the Libero® SoC Design Suite, Microchip’s comprehensive development tool.

Through the Libero SoC Design Suite, all IP can be implemented on the PolarFire FPGA Video and Imaging Kit, the evaluation platform for Smart Embedded Vision designs.

http://www.microchip.com

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Osram Opto introduces lighting design library

Mon, Jul 15, 2019

Collaborating with SnapEDA, the electronics design library, Osram Opto Semiconductors has released its entire collection of photodiodes, phototransistors, laser diodes and infra red (IR) emitters on SnapEDA’s website to help PCB designers and electronic engineers integrate them into designs.

Rather than spend days creating digital models for each component in their designs, engineers can simply drag-and-drop Osram components into designs, saving time which can be spent on the design build.

The models can be downloaded without charge from SnapEDA’s electronics design library and from the websites of Osram’s franchised distributors which support SnapEDA models.

Highlights of the library selection include the Synios P 2720 series of high-power IR illumination LED technology with compact packaging, the IR Oslon Black family, for high power density with a small package and integrated lens and the IR Topled D5140 portfolio, a traditional DIL large-area Si PIN photodiode in a compact package.

Electronic design formats that are supported include Cadence OrCAD, Allegro, Altium, Eagle, KiCad, PCB123, Proteus, and Mentor Graphics PADS. The PCB footprints have been created based on Osram’s recommended land patterns or IPC-7351B standards when applicable.

Osram components include LEDs, IR LEDs (IREDs), laser diodes, photodiodes and phototransistors, which are used in automotive lighting, industrial electronics and mobile electronics as well as in general lighting.

SnapEDA is believed to be the internet’s first parts library for circuit board design. It provides ready-to-use building blocks for circuit board design via its website and plug-ins for PCB design tools. The accessibility can save days in product development in products ranging from medical devices, to electric airplanes.

http://www.snapeda.com

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Arm Flexible Access gives chip designers the freedom to experiment and test before they invest

Research indicates Pohoiki Beach chip for neural-inspired algortithms

Microchip adds FPGAs and IP to smart embedded vision initiative

Osram Opto introduces lighting design library

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