ISSCC

Radeon RX 5700: Navi and the RDNA Architecture

Architectures Circuit Design Graphics Processors ISSCC 2020 February 23, 2020 0

A look at AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 GPU built on a 7-nanometer process based on the new Navi microarchitecture and RDNA graphics architecture.

7nm Boosted Zen 2 Capabilities but Doubled the Challenges

Architectures Floorplanning Interconnects ISSCC 2020 February 21, 2020 2

The transition to 7 nm greatly enhanced AMD silicon capabilities but introduced new drastic design challenges that required new place and route methodologies and wire engineering.

ISSCC 2018: The IBM z14 Microprocessor And System Control Design

Architectures Circuit Design Floorplanning ISSCC 2018 Server Processors May 13, 2018 4

A look at the changes and enhancements that were implemented by IBM in their z14 mainframe microprocessor and system control chips.

QUEST, A TCI-Based 3D-Stacked SRAM Neural Processor

Architectures Circuit Design ISSCC 2018 Neural Processors April 25, 2018 0

Attempting to address the memory bandwidth problem, the QUEST neural processor uses 3D-stacked SRAM dies along with ThruChip Interface wireless communication technology to deliver sufficiently high bandwidth to sustain peak processing performance.

AMD’s Zen CPU Complex, Cache, and SMU

Architectures Circuit Design ISSCC 2018 April 18, 2018 0

A look at AMD’s Zen CPU Complex (CCX), a fully independent and modular cluster of up to four cores that are incorporated into a full SoC to form complete products such as their Zeppelin die.

ISSCC 2018: Intel’s Self-Powered Intelligent IoT Edge Mote

Architectures Embedded Processors ISSCC 2018 April 2, 2018 0

A look at Intel’s tiny intelligent IoT edge mote operating at near-threshold voltage and harvesting solar energy for charging. Equipped with sensors and an SoC with hardware to accelerate convolutional neural networks (CNNs), the chip collects environmental sensory data and captures images which are classified on-chip and sent to a data center in order to improve and optimize agricultural fields.

ISSCC 2018: AMD’s Zeppelin; Multi-chip routing and packaging

Architectures Circuit Design Floorplanning ISSCC 2018 March 24, 2018 6

A look at AMD’s Zeppelin SoC and the Infinity Fabric, a multi-chip architecture used by AMD to scale their SoC design from the mainstream PC market all the way to the server market.

ISSCC 2018: MIT’s low-power hardware crypto RISC-V IoT processor

Architectures Circuit Design Embedded Processors ISSCC 2018 March 17, 2018 1

In recent years, IoT devices have been plagued with security issues. Memory and energy constraints of those low-power devices mean there is very little headroom for complex security implementations. At ISSCC 2018, a team of MIT researchers has attempted to address this problem with their low-power fully in-hardware crypto engine IoT RISC-V processor.

ISSCC 2018: Intel’s Skylake-SP Mesh and Floorplan

Architectures Circuit Design Floorplanning ISSCC 2018 March 9, 2018 0

At ISSCC 2018 Intel gave us some more interesting architectural details of their latest Skylake server microprocessors which brought a new mesh interconnect, a new cache hierarchy, and wider vector operations among a large array of other enhancements.

IEDM 2017 + ISSCC 2018: Intel’s 10nm, switching to cobalt interconnects

IEDM 2017 ISSCC 2018 Process Technologies February 17, 2018 3

At IEDM 2017 and ISSCC 2018 Intel detailed their upcoming 10nm node, an aggressively scaled 7nm-class process technology that features new scaling accelerators as well as cobalt interconnect for the first time in high-volume manufacturing.