TECH:: What is inside iPhone5 - A15 or ?

It's certainly a curious topic and while discussing together, we concluded that iPhone5 has A15 dual core -

http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0438g/index.html

What it is ?

The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor is a high-performance, low-power processor that implements the ARMv7-A architecture. The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor has one to four processors in a single multiprocessor device, or MPCore device, with L1 and L2 cache subsystems.

In addition, A15 MPCore is a lot more powerful with -

NEON technology is the implementation of the Advanced Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) extension to the ARMv7-A architecture. It provides support for integer and floating-point vector operations. This technology extends the processor functionality to provide support for the ARMv7 Advanced SIMDv2 instruction set.

VFP is the vector floating-point coprocessor extension to the ARMv7-A architecture. It provides low-cost high performance floating-point computation. VFP extends the processor functionality to provide support for the ARMv7 VFPv4 instruction set.
You can configure the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor to include different combinations of support for Advanced SIMD and VFP extensions.

sources : http://support.arm.com

NS throw some light on another revealation from www.anandtech.com which goes as follows -

The iPhone 5 will ship with and only run iOS 6.0. To coincide with the launch of iOS 6.0, Apple has seeded developers with a newer version of its development tools. Xcode 4.5 makes two major changes: it drops support for the ARMv6 ISA (used by the ARM11 core in the iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G), keeps support for ARMv7 (used by modern ARM cores) and it adds support for a new architecture target designed to support the new A6 SoC: armv7s.

What's the main difference between the armv7 and armv7s architecture targets for the LLVM C compiler? The presence of VFPv4 support. The armv7s target supports it, the v7 target doesn't. Why does this matter?

TECH:: Xuropa : A cloud based tool evaluation.....novel

A new approach for IP evaluation has been devised and Cadence has already boarded on it.

The Cadence tools evaluations are available -

http://www.xuropa.com/ixuropa_home.php

The Cadence verification IP evaluations can be performed online. The tool permits to skip the negotiations for evaluation licenses and too som extent keep oneself free from time bound evaluations. Mostly, if you get carried away due to project requirement from the evaluations, you again get in discussions with vendors to extend licenses. This approach certainly helps to evaluate verification IP.

Also, there's a note which says that the interface is optimized with Chrome and Firefox so better to use these browsers.

TECH:: iOS 6 left me dejected.....

Here comes the iOS 6 but what I see on http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/19/ios-6-is-now-available-heres-what-features-your-idevice-gets/ left me dejected, As per their table (a very nice presentation of overall features vs device availability) -

So iPhone 3GS seems to be completely left out....and why not, it's all the next gen stuff so I should be more determined to upgrade my device too....( I should re-consider Samsung too....worth it, I guess ).

Further I found more information on iOS 6 features. There seems to be some great features like better and advanced map, Siri (I didn't yet used it !), Panoramic view etc.

There are a lot more details available

 iOS 6 - 10 most important additions [ When it arrives on handsets and tablets this fall, iOS 6 won’t just be a simple operating system update — it will be Apple’s interpretation of exactly how a modern mobile OS should perform. And at Apple’s WWDC keynote Monday, the company highlighted 10 key areas of improvement to wow the masses.]

Further details are availble her -

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/ios-6-tips-and-hidden-features/

I'll look forward if iOS 6 can updated my current device !!

~D

TECH:: iPhone 5 and iOS 6 shall rock....

iPhone 5 came on 13th Sept., it seemed not what people considered exceptional but yet the reports are that it's blown away by pre-orders. The details on iPhone 5 as available -

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

Yet, there is no news on what the A6 processor they have inside but with the already known specifications, it's much better and higher performance and also much more power efficient. The one issue which I faced with my 3GS (yet no iPhone 4s) that the battery life is real problematic. It seemed to be much better as announced.

I'm yet curious to know if A6 was designed inside or ...?

I would love to have iPhone 5 soon....in my hand !!!!

on iOS 6, there are details....what it'll have -

TECH:: High performance GPU...

Graphics Processing Unit - ARM

Even high performance GPU has been focus for most of the companies. After the nVidia, Arm is bullish on MALI Graphics Processing Unit(GPU) as can be seen here -

http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics-hardware/mali-t678.php

In fact, as I could gather Arm started the GPU design when it acquired FALAnx -

http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/13706.php

Obviously, it's a great vision of Arm which focused on integrating the GPU with CPU as next generation is turning towards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPGPU. What it means is that - "General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, GPGP or less often GP²U) shall replace the CPU or handles all the traditional operations which is till date handled by CPU."

"Contnuing the MALI advancements, ARM is launching even higher performance GPU named T678 (after T658, T628....) which is the latest addition based on the Midgard architecture and builds on proven technology leadership. Mali-T678 is the GPU of choice for use in the next generation of market-leading devices, optimized to bring breathtaking graphical displays to consumer applications such as 3D graphics, visual computing, augmented reality, procedural texture generation and voice recognition."

                                                                         *source : http://www.arm.com







 The Mali-T678 delivers the highest Mali-T600 series performance to date, achieved by doubling the number of GPU cores, doubling the number of arithmetic pipelines within each core and improving the compiler and pipeline efficiency.

The ARM Mali-T678 GPU supports multiple Compute APIs, including Khronos® OpenCL,Google Renderscript compute and Microsoft DirectCompute. It provides native hardware support for 64-bit scalar and vector, integer and floating-point data types - fundamental to accelerate complex and computationally intensive algorithms. Maintains complete support for Khronos APIs across the Mali-T600 series of GPUs.

The Job Manager within Mali-T600 Series GPUs offloads task management from the CPU to the GPU and enables seamless load balancing across active shader cores. Concurrent delivery of a common set of compatible drivers for all Midgard architecture-based Mali GPUs enables faster time-to-market and minimizes software upgrade costs for future implementations.



Basically the tile based rendering has an edge when it comed to better performance GPU operations. The GPU is gaining although a comparative study to what exists in the marker is not available oftenly.

~D

PUBLICATION:: article A generic, cohesive approach for IP and SoC verification using Virtual Platform

article A generic, cohesive approach for IP and SoC verification using Virtual Platform

Published an article in Techonline INDIA.

The article discuss the use of virtual platforms for verification extensively including IP as well as the SoC verification. Sandeep has worked with me to move the approach in this direction. Later in 2010, Alberto Allara realized the approach and proposed to use it with SystemVerilog/UVM verification methodology. It has further added a lot more values to overall methodology.

Verification News

There have been various efforts from EDA companies e.g. Cadence and Mentor Graphics on verification IPs and I had been using Cadence VIPs. Synopsys too acquired nSys and started a chapter in this domain.

Synopsys's community site for Verification IPs online resources and blogs -

http://www.vip-central.org/ 

VIP-Central.org is an industry-wide community site for system-on-chip (SoC) verification engineers and users of verification IP (VIP). The site provides a centralized online resource of relevant forums and blogs focused on verification of industry-standard protocols. VIP-Central.org is the go-to source for the latest technical information and discussions on the use of verification IP and advanced verification methodologies to verify protocol-based IP as well as IP integration, SoC sub-systems and full SoCs. VIP-Central.org aggregates information from industry experts across the verification community, providing best practices and ideas for better verification performance, protocol debug, methodology, verification planning, coverage management and ease-of-use.

source : http://www.vip-central.org/

 Mentor Graphics's community site -

http://verificationacademy.com/ 

"Mentor Graphics' Verification Academy is a first of its kind—unlike anything in the industry. 
Its goals are to provide the skills necessary to mature an organization’s advanced functional 
verification process capabilities. To this end, the Verification Academy provides a methodological
bridge between high-level value propositions (related to advanced verification technology) and the
low-level details (related to specific tool and verification language details)."

source : http://verificationacademy.com/