Making Sure A Heterogeneous Design Will Work
By Ed Sperling, Semiconductor Engineering
Why the addition of multiple processing elements and memories is causing so much consternation. An explosion of various types of processors and localized memories on a chip or in a package is making it much more difficult to verify and test these devices, and to sign off with confidence.
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“There are a lot of applications for heterogeneous computing, including AI and machine learning, 5G, sensor fusion, and high-performance computing,” said Raik Brinkmann, president and CEO of OneSpin Solutions. “You want to map algorithms to the hardware, which is being done today in the cloud. But you can’t go after the cloud without addressing latency, performance and power. You also have issues with IC integrity, and beyond that functional safety and security. So the big question is how do you address all of this in the design flow. Do you implement it on some programmable fabric or do you do it with a heterogeneous platform? And when you verify this, do you do a bottom-up metric analysis with flexible code coverage or do you use a top-down approach?”
