SemiWiki: Is Arteris Poised to Enable Next Generation System Design?

Key Takeaways

• The semiconductor industry is shifting from monolithic to multi-die designs, heavily influenced by complex AI software that dictates hardware requirements.
• Arteris is emerging as a key player in addressing critical challenges like the ‘memory wall’ problem through their cache-coherent NOC technology.
• The management and integration of numerous IP blocks in modern designs can be complex; Arteris uses its Magillem technology for effective oversight.

The semiconductor ecosystem is changing. Monolithic design is becoming multi-die design. Processors no longer inform software development options. It’s now the other way around with complex AI software informing the design of purpose-built hardware. And all that special-purpose hardware needs drivers to make it come to life. This interplay of complex, multi-chip connectivity and ever-increasing demands of how the software invokes the hardware are all new. This isn’t your father’s (or mother’s) chip design project. All of this made me wonder where the driving forces will be to take us to the next level of semiconductor system design. There are many important players in this field. Recently, I was struck by a series of observations about one of those players. The apparent alignment is noteworthy. In this post, I’ll explore those observations. Is Arteris poised to enable next generation system design?

Some Observations

Most folks think “network on a chi”, or NOC when they hear the name Arteris. The company has certainly blazed an important trail toward automating the interconnect of vast on-chip resources. That is the beginning of the story and not the end, however. Providing the backbone to connect the parts of a complex design opens many doors. Let’s look at a few.

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