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In the past decade, the move towards cloud computing occurred primarily in sectors like finance, retail, and healthcare, with the emergence of leading public cloud vendors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and others accelerating the trend. However, the chip design industry has been slower to adopt cloud computing.

In the current highly competitive environment where the cost of semiconductor design and manufacturing has soared, innovative cloud-enabled solutions are what the semiconductor industry needs to address quality requirements, time-to-market schedules, and high-cost challenges. Electronic design automation (EDA) solutions are essential components of semiconductor design and verification and play a significant role in the industrys move to the cloud. We will take a closer look at how using the public cloud for semiconductor design and verification is helping drive semiconductor innovation.

Fig. 1: Cloud computing technology is helping accelerate silicon innovation.

Chip design complexity has dramatically increased, driven by the explosion of big data and semiconductor industry market pressures from expanding applications including high-performance computing, Internet of Things (IoT), automotive, artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G mobile communications. The design complexity is compounded further by using advanced technology nodes for high-performance, low power and area IPs, the building block of SoCs (System on a Chip).

Thorough verification of these IPs is imperative. However, it requires significant compute capacity and resources (figure 2) to handle the corresponding heavy workload and achieve robust IP design through the various IP design and verification stages. As a result, on-premises compute capacity has undeniably become a bottleneck for chip design teams to design and verify their IP designs and bring their SoC to market faster.Cloud computing has become a viable option for the design teams to use for designing and verifying modern SoCs Siemens EDA has demonstrated and provided ahighly scalable cloud computing capacity for AMS verification workloads using Microsoft Azure cloud.

What are the key market drivers and benefits influencing chip design teams, and how can cloud-based EDA solutions help drive innovation?

Fig. 2: IP design and verification workflow.

With chips becoming more complex and larger, the amount of compute resources required is significant to accommodate the compute-intensive workloads needed for thorough verification of every stage of the IP design and verification flow. Then there is the burst computer resource demand at the design tape-out stage. In addition, concurrent IP development projects within a company compete for the same compute resources, causing further delays. As a result, compute resources are becoming a significant bottleneck, impacting time-to-market targets. Furthermore, on-premises data centers cannot quickly adapt to varying design and verification workloads. In contrast, cloud computing can help increase throughput with access to significantly more and flexible compute resources. Also, the ability to quickly scale up and or down elasticity based on the verification needs makes the cloud even more attractive for chip designers.

Like highly parallelizable verification tasks, specific workloads are more suitable for cloud computing, providing significant throughput improvement. For example, consider an advanced node library characterization flow, a highly parallelizable task. Built-in machine learning enabled technologies may significantly reduce runtimes required for library characterization. However, a significant amount of SPICE simulation is needed to characterize each library revision. Today, characterizing an entire standard cell library requires hundreds of millions to billions of SPICE simulations to generate the timing.lib files used by synthesis, place & route, and signoff timing analysis tools. Because of this, library characterization tasks take up to several days to weeks to complete. Siemens EDA and AWS have collaborated to providea scalable, secure and cost-effective cloud-based library characterization flowthat enables users to leverage cloud computing resources to accelerate library characterization.

To meet specifications and adapt to the challenges of smaller, more advanced technology nodes without compromising the quality of results power, performance, and area (PPA) and yield, designers need to perform extensive verification to account for all potential design variations. This includes performing extensive process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) and Monte Carlo SPICE simulation at a granular level. These are highly compute-intensive workloads demanding significantly more compute resources than on-premises data centers can accommodate. Hence, design teams often must make difficult trade-offs by adding design margins to meet time-to-market (TTM). Siemens EDA enables customers to migrate to the cloudand meet and exceed quality of results with higher chip yieldwithin production run times.

Another equally compelling benefit to moving to the cloud is overall lower cost. Companies like a startup may choose to go all on the cloud. On the other hand, enterprise semiconductor companies may use a hybrid cloud model to augment their on-premises data center. With cloud service vendors providing flexible pricing models like pay-as-you-go pricing, design teams can scale up and down the compute resources on a need basis at each stage of the IP design development cycle. Cloud computing resources help reduce capital expenditures and lower the cost required year-round to upgrade and maintain a data center that is typically architected and sized for peak usage, such as sign-off verification.

In the past decade, the move of EDA to the cloud has been hindered by concerns about the security of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and data, which at the time outweighed the significant benefits gained by computing in the cloud. But chip design complexity continues to drive the need for massively parallel computing. This huge catalyst has accelerated the development of advanced cloud security and fault-tolerant solutions by cloud service providers. Siemens EDA is working with cloud service providers and foundries, ensuring the solutions support the cloud security protocols and infrastructure. Consequently, leading foundries have adopted the cloud and acknowledged the security of the cloud infrastructure by having their IP and process design kits (PDKs) in the cloud helping diminish the security concerns.

Siemens EDA is partnered with cloud service vendors to innovate and provide semiconductor companies a seamless transition to the cloud by delivering optimized cloud-ready AMS verification solutions and best practices. The cloud-ready solutions provide scalability, flexibility, and security, enabling the chip design team to meet their PPA metric and TTM goals. In addition, proven best practices equip design teams with cloud reference architectures to choose from, including the network configurations, type of virtual machines, storage, and data transfer mechanisms to guide them on their cloud journey.

The semiconductor industry is under relentless market pressure to produce innovative, high-performing chips and meet TTM targets. In tandem, innovation of cloud-ready and cloud-optimized EDA solutions will be crucial to support the high demand for compute resources to reduce IP design development cycle times.

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EDA In The Cloud Is Driving Semiconductor Innovation - SemiEngineering

Telco clouds and IT clouds use the same architectural framework and agile principles to achieve scale, but theyve been siloed. 5G core networks are now-cloud native.

Whats the difference between thetelco cloudand IT cloud? Until now, the two have existed separate but equally. Whether its a telco cloud or IT cloud, public, private, or hybrid. WWherever the cloud lives, cloud computing architectures are the same. Theyre scalable, agile, flexible, and responsive. Data storage and compute resources can be made instantly available depending on need.

At the heart of both clouds is Software-Defined Networking (SDN). Replacing network hardware with software made the first clouds able to more efficiently manage and scale network operations than they ever could before.Network Function Virtualization(NFV) started the trend as routers, switches, and other proprietary gear was replaced with Virtual Machine (VM) software running in the data center.

Abstracting real hardware to run virtually in the cloud operators the ability to scale operations. Bare-metal hypervisors running VMs in data centers squeezed every iota of performance available. From there, the best opportunity to manage compute resources efficiently is to replace VMs altogether withCloud-Native Functions(CNFs).

The IT cloud doesnt just power agile enterprise operations. Its enabled the explosive growth ofhyperscalers, the architects of the modern public cloud. Managing networking and Internet service infrastructure is an essential function of the cloud ecosystem. Getting that infrastructure to scale elastically to meet the often opposing demands of consumers and enterprise requires hyperscale services.

Cloud computing is ubiquitous. Enterprises and consumers increasingly depend on public cloud services. The forces of gravity of both domains require IT cloud and telco cloud to merge. Hybrid cloud solutions put cloud resources where they need to be. Whether thats on-prem, in a private cloud, on the public cloud, or, depending on security and service requirements, or anywhere in between.

Thats enabling new opportunities for IT system integrators like Kyndryl (ne IBMs GTS managed service business).VMware has partnered with VMwareand also with Microsoft to develop new customer solutions for app modernization which are cloud-independent. Kyndryl will tap VMwares portfolio of products to speed cloud transformation for its clients. Areas the companies expect to offer differentiate solutions include edge computing, security and multi-cloud infrastructure and management.

Telco clouds have existed in parallel development just like IT clouds. Network operators have, by necessity, siloed their clouds. Telco clouds are purpose-built for the stringent operational demands of telecom. 5G cloud-nativity promises and end to dependency on more vendor-specific hardware. Vendors can to manage almost all network services using software running on commodity hardware. Even at the baseband level with efforts like Open RAN.

The 5G core network is cloud-native. It employs aService-Based Architecture, which works fundamentally like any other cloud. But the needs and service requirements of network operators are different from hyperscalers, and the devil is in those details.

Telco operations have more stringent performance and quality of service requirements than IT or public cloud operation. As well as with vastly more regulatory oversight. Operator networks require faster traffic management, more reliability, minimized jitter and lower latency than public clouds. Clouds for telcos exist with special requirements in mind.

A telco cloud represents the data center resources that are required to deploy and manage a mobile phone network with data transfer capabilities by carrier companies in production operations at scale,said VMware.

IBM Cloud for Telecommunications, for example incorporates IBM Cloud Satellite and Red Hat OpenShift for flexible cloud-based service delivery and integrates IBMs Edge Application Manager and Telco Network Cloud Manager. It is an ecosystem with dozens of partners focusing on vertical solutions using 5G and edge.

VMwares Telco Cloudplatform is its consistent horizontal architecture to provide 5G network operators with to continue to run existing services, such as vEPC and have the same platform support new, cloud-native services, including standalone 5G services.

Dish is using VMware Telco Cloudin its 5G Standalone (SA) network. VMware Telco Cloud is the underlying cloud platform and infrastructure layer to power the carriers open radio access network-based 5G network.

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Telco cloud vs. IT cloud: What's the difference? - RCR Wireless News

The cloud has revolutionized the way that people store information. The cloud is integral to Fintech because it offers a cost-effective and scalable platform for storing data, processing transactions, and running applications. It also helps ensure that your companys security is safe from cyberattacks.

Cloud computing enables businesses to focus on their core competencies while leveraging powerful new capabilities for managing information, processing transactions, analyzing data insights, securing sensitive dataall without incurring significant upfront investment or long-term commitments.

This blog post will explore how the cloud is an integral part of Fintech.

A Fintech app is an app that provides financial services. More specifically, a Fintech application typically includes money transfers or payment processing tools. Therefore, more often than not, these apps are mobile-based and include functions such as account balances and transactions history tracking, bill paying by scanning checks with your smartphones camera without the need to visit the bank branch or pay them online from anywhere -, etc.

In addition, most fintech applications provide security features like two-factor authentication, making it harder for hackers to access sensitive information stored on your phone. In this way, users can feel safe when using their devices to carry out different tasks requiring high-level privacy protection.

The cloud is an integral part of Fintech because it can help businesses to reduce costs when implementing solutions. It also helps companies looking to expand their resources without having the high up front cost that would normally come along with this type of investment.

Since you dont need additional hardware for your cloud computing, youll be able to manage and maintain these services in a more efficient manner than if you were operating on-premise (in-house) servers or infrastructure. Theres no hardware required, which means there will be less maintenance involved as well since much of this work can take place remotely, allowing IT support staffs time to be better spent elsewhere instead of just sitting around waiting for something to go wrong with equipment at the office facility where everything is being hosted.

Cloud technology allows for real-time updates and changes, which is important in the Fintech industry, where things can change rapidly. The cloud also allows for scalability, so businesses can grow as needed. And finally, the cloud provides security and compliance assurances essential in the financial sector. For all these reasons, its clear that the cloud is a key part of Fintech.

The impact of cloud computing in Fintech is immense. It is the new way of doing things without being limited by infrastructure or resources.

The cloud has enabled companies to quickly access computing power, storage space, and software on demand at a reasonable cost. Fintech companies use this resource extensively to manage their data centers with ease and computing needs required for business growth. Online payments have benefitted from the cloud in many ways, including scalability, security, transaction speed, etc. Cloud computing allows your company to focus on differentiating features instead of worrying about maintaining hardware and software requirements. This means you can use all your time developing innovative products rather than deploying them. The ultimate result? More revenue streams through faster online payment processing services go to the cloud.

The cloud is playing an important role in developing new payment technologies and services. The cloud is also being used to develop new ways of processing faster, more reliable payments and provide a better customer experience. All this would not be possible without the cloud.

Public, private, or hybrid? The cloud is an integral part of Fintech, and the type of cloud you choose will depend on your specific needs. If youre looking for scalability and flexibility, public clouds are a good option. Private clouds are better suited for companies that need more control over their data security. Hybrid clouds combine the best features of both public and private clouds. Whichever type of cloud you choose, make sure its able to handle the high-volume transactions typical of FinTech applications.

The cloud offers fintech organizations a number of advantages, including:

The cloud can easily scale to meet the needs of your organization. This is important for fintech organizations that are constantly growing and expanding their services.

Cloud-based solutions often cost less than traditional on-premises solutions. Fintech organizations can save money by taking advantage of the economies of scale offered by the cloud.

Cloud-based solutions are accessible from anywhere in the world. This means that your fintech organization can be available 24/365 around the globe, which is important when dealing with global customers and markets.

The security features built into modern cloud platforms protect data against attacks while still allowing users to access it remotely via a mobile device or computer.

Cloud-based solutions are compatible with other systems and protocols, including Web services standards like XML and RESTful API calls. This makes them easier for developers to integrate than on-premises software products.

Several challenges need to be addressed before the cloud can become more widely adopted in the Fintech industry. These challenges include:

-Security and privacy concerns

-Lack of standardization

-Data latency issues

-Limited bandwidth and storage capacity

These challenges need to be addressed if the cloud will play a larger role in Fintech. The good news is that many companies are already working on extended car warranty solutions to these issues, and we should see some significant progress over the next few years. Cloud adoption will continue to increase in Fintech as these issues are resolved.

Its not just the tech giants who are building their services around cloud computing. Fintech companies have embraced this technology to provide better customer service and greater security for sensitive data. As more people turn away from banks in favor of these digital options, they must be able to trust vendors with their personal information. The best way to do so? Make sure you use a secure cloud provider like AWS or Azure

Link:
Why the Cloud Is an Integral Part of Fintech - WebProNews