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How Andrej Karpathy uses LLMs
Andrej Karpathy, a former research scientist and a founding member of OpenAI, had a great video showing how he uses LLMs in his own life. We highly recommend everyone to watch this video, and try taking advantage of LLMs in daily life. The following are…
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How to avoid cache interference in SoC DRAM testing?
In SoC DRAM testing, the existence of a cache could interfere with the testing accuracy. This is because, when initiating a DRAM access from the CPU, a cache instead of DRAM could supply the data. Avoid Cache Interference in Software Based Testing To avoid cache…
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How to do SoC DRAM Testing?
SoC DRAM testing can be done either in hardware or software. We focus on software methods here. PassMark’s MemTest86 is probably the most popular SoC DRAM testing software, especially for consumer products. We use MemTest86 test kit for our case study. Test 0 – Address…
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What are SoC DRAM faults?
DRAM related faults can be roughly classified into: Before an SoC is shipped to customers, its DRAM has to go through extensive DRAM testing, e.g., MemTest86. This makes sure that the refresh operation is sufficient to prevent data loss, and that the DRAM bus does…
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SEC Mapping Types: Cutpoint Mapping vs Stopat Mapping
We discussed how SEC works using clock gating FV in a previous post, and introduced cutpoint mapping. We will extend the discussion about the SEC mapping types in this post. A cutpoint is a pair of internal signals that you expect to be equal. The…
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Published: The 2nd Edition of Our Book Series “Crack the Hardware Interview”
We are thrilled to announce that, the second edition of “Crack the Hardware Interview” is released! We published the first edition of this book series in early 2024, and received quite a few positive feedback. The second edition is still structured in the same way…
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How can latch arrays save power? How do they work?
In the digital design world, data storages in magnitude of MegaBytes (MB), KiloBytes (KB) and Bytes (B), are typically implemented using DRAM, SRAM and flops, respectively. Flop arrays, in particular, can sometimes be replaced with latch arrays, to optimize power. An Idea and A Concept…
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How to Eliminate Metastability Caused by Reset Removal?
In practice, reset assertion is asynchronous and de-assertion is synchronous. Synchronous reset de-assertion can make sure flops are under metastability after reset removal. However, due to place and route, reset de-assertion does not happen simultaneously for all flops in an SoC. RTL designers must be…
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How to Boost Emulation Performance & Efficiency?
Emulation is commonly used in hardware verification and validation. Unlike simulation where all RTL / hardware activities are modeled in software domain, emulation is running on both software and hardware. The table below shows a comparison between RTL / hardware simulation and emulation: Simulation Emulation…
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How does Synthesis Tool do Boundary Optimization?
Boundary Optimization is a synthesis optimization technique to exploit functional constraints across design hierarchies. Boundary Optimization includes the following: The diagram below shows each of the above techniques. Note, optimizations within the sub-design are not considered as Boundary Optimizations, for example, constant and unloaded register…
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