Packet-Based NPUs In The LLM Era: From Compute-Bound CNNs To Memory-Bound Edge And Automotive Workloads
Many Semiconductor Engineering readers know the basic story behind Expedera’s Origin NPU IP architecture: packets instead of layers, higher MAC utilization, and less gratuitous movement of activations to external memory.…
What’s changing now is the workload mix.
Vision-only edge processors are giving way to systems where LLMs, VLMs…
In terms of NPU design, what are the implications when the dominant ed…
What Self-Verifying Means In Agentic EDA Workflows And Why It Matters
Last month, we covered the architectural decisions behind a production-ready EDA AI agent: domain grounding, scalable orchestration across a fragmented tool ecosystem, native interpretation of EDA data formats, and security at the execution layer.…
These are the foundations upon which successful agentic workflows for …
When an agent is executing a long-running EDA workflow autonomously, m…
Why deterministic physics-based EDA engines matter The answer is physi…
Key Takeaways: Hardware and software development have traditionally been disconnected, creating little opportunity to optimize system-level performance and energy consumption.…
Development swings between specialized and generalized solutions based…
Energy and thermal concerns are forcing more companies to create speci…
Thirty years ago, there was a lot of interest in hardware/software co-…
Key Takeaways: The push toward 1-megawatt racks is forcing fundamental changes in data center architecture, including cooling, power delivery, rack design, and 3D-IC packaging.…
Higher rack densities may not be the only viable scaling path, as opti…
AI and agentic workloads are shifting systems from average-power assum…
Data centers are gearing up for a future in which a single rack could …