HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is the most popular medium for transporting both audio and video information between two digital devices. In the past two decades, HDMI technology has evolved from HDMI 1.0 to HDMI 2.0. In 2017 HDMI 2.1 introduced enhanced gaming and media features such as Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) to eliminate lag, stutter, and tearing, adding smoothness to the gaming and video experience. Recently the HDMI Forum has announced a new version, HDMI2.1a, that brings a standout gamer-friendly feature, Source-Based Tone Mapping (SBTM).
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Posted in Display, HDMI, Protocol Continuum
Data is the new fuel powering critical use-cases for cloud /edge computing, and advances in AI. All aspects of data handling – gathering, storing, moving, processing, and dispersing – pose unique design implementation and verification challenges. The need for heterogenous computing has given exponential rise to application specific accelerators, pushing the industry to come up with a solution for efficient data handling and resource utilization. CXL is a processor interconnect protocol designed to support high bandwidth, low-latency interface from CPU to workload accelerators, maintaining memory coherency across heterogeneous devices, while addressing security needs of the user.
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Posted in CXL, Data Center, Interconnects, PCIe, Protocol Continuum
Emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, Automotive, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High-Performance Computing, have given rise to potentially transformative trends demanding the need for faster memory access. 5G brings with itself the ability for faster download and upload speeds, making high-speed real-time data transfer possible. All the fancy smartphone processors have inbuilt cutting-edge features like high resolution multimedia processing, faster Machine Learning (ML) computations, Image processing capabilities and faster frame rates for all you gaming freaks. But don’t forget underlying all this, is the need for faster memory, AI/ML requires higher bandwidth to support faster processing of massive data.
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Posted in LPDDR, Memory
With the release of HDMI 2.1, higher video resolutions and refresh rates including 8K@60Hz and 4K@120Hz are a reality. In a previous blog, 10K Resolution at 120Hz Display: A Reality Today with DSC 1.2 in HDMI 2.1, we explained how HDMI 2.1 can support resolutions and refresh rates of the order 4K@240Hz, 8K@120Hz and 10K@120Hz with display stream compression (DSC). With increased resolution you get finer details and with higher refresh rate the moving content feels smoother. But it also means more pixel information and thus higher data transmission rate, higher bandwidth, and higher power consumption. What if there is a way to reduce the transmission rate while keeping the resolution and refresh rate intact? The answer lies in the reduced blanking feature in which the blanking region of a frame is reduced significantly.
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Posted in Display, HDMI, MIPI
Coherent Hub Interface, popularly known as CHI, is an Interface specification that is part of 5th generation of AMBA® protocols (AMBA® 5) from Arm, released in 2013. AMBA® 5 CHI defines the interfaces for connection of fully coherent processors and dynamic memory controllers, to high performance non-blocking interconnects.
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Posted in AMBA, Arm
SoC designs are growing more complex, not just by the sheer number of transistors that can be packed into one design, but the emergence of different interconnect methods you must use to connect chip internals and to connect to the outside world. Becoming an expert on each of the interconnect protocols is not going to shorten the verification schedules, reduce design productivity and expose design bugs that might only be found when used by the end consumer.
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Posted in ACE, AMBA, CXL, Debug, Display, Ethernet, HBM, Memory, Test Suites, Verification Service
Color space is a very powerful tool that comes in handy when capturing, transmitting and reproducing color back to the human eye. Systems such as cameras, GPUs, transmission cables (HDMI/DP), and monitors use color space metrics to preserve and transform color. This technology helps map real colors to the color model’s discrete values.
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Posted in Camera, Display, DisplayPort
Lately television lovers across the world have an even better reason to be glued to the small screens, as 8K Ultra HD TVs have made their way to the market. The HDMI forums most recently released specification, v2.1, explains “higher video resolutions support a range of high resolutions and faster refresh rates including 8K60Hz and 4K120Hz for immersive viewing and smooth fast-action detail…” Most of us are familiar with the word “resolution”, but do we really know this term well?
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Posted in Camera, Display, HDMI, Uncategorized
JEDEC recently announced the ratification of JESD79-5 DDR5 SDRAM to support the standardization of next-generation memory devices, catering to demand from rapid expansion in high performance computing and data center applications. This new standard promises to deliver 2X memory bandwidth, 4X larger density dies, and much improved power efficiency (1.1V Vdd). The DDR5 DIMM will operate in dual-channel mode all on its own, with two 40-bit fully independent sub-channels on the same module.
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Posted in DDR, Memory
Ever-increasing expectations for mobile device performance have been driving the need for versatile mobile memory solutions. JEDEC has recently announced the publication of JESD209-5A which is equipped to match the latest bandwidth, power, performance, and reliability trends. The JESD209-5A standard offers several feature enhancements in addition to the existing LPDDR5 standard, including support for Partial Array Refresh Control (PARC), Refresh Management, Enhanced Write Clock (WCK) Always On Mode, Optimized Refresh, etc. This blog will briefly discuss the new features introduced in the updated LPDDR5 standard which has helped to significantly reduce power consumption and improved in data integrity.
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Posted in LPDDR
