ASIC Design has joined SiFive’s DesignShare ecosystem. Through this partnership, ASIC Design Services will provide its Core Deep Learning (CDL) technology that accelerates Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) on power-constrained embedded hardware platforms.
ASIC Design Services’ CDL technology optimizes its CNN accelerator FPGA core for performance, logic resources, and low power, making CDL suitable for IoT edge and node applications. The CDL Coldbrew software stack performs quantization and compression of CNNs, design space exploration, and generates a solution optimized for performance, resources, and low power. Coldbrew is built on the Caffe deep learning framework and provides a simple user interface to bridge the gap between high-level CNN specification and FPGA design.
The availability of ASIC Design Services’ CDL IP through the DesignShare program shortens the time to market and removes common barriers to entry that have traditionally prevented smaller companies from developing custom silicon. Companies like SiFive, ASIC Design Services and other DesignShare partners provide low- or no-cost IP to emerging companies, minimizing the upfront engineering costs needed to bring a custom chip from design to realization.