what is hot-topic in digital design now?

I think verification is hot now,
and mepg is also.

For me, Help Me Eat (HME) and Make Money Chip (MMC) are hot.

And SOC (System Out of Control) is definately a terrible disaster. SOP (System On a Package) might be more reasonable.

jamesyang1209 said:

How about OTG and PCI express?

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these two topics are newly introduced, especially PCIE.
Many Design house in china ara engaged in VIDEO Codec/STB/POSE card...

yeah. i know a lot of companies are designing
H.264 related chips.

market and profit is the most important

may be IP design is a hotspot

Portable applicances to cooperate in distributed computing enviroment will be hot, I think. Mobiles will evolve to powerful handset with multimedia processing. Or in other words, mobile+digital camera+digital audio/video player/recorder. IC industry will be able to provide chips to support such aggressive designs very soon.

wirless communation/DTV/DAB/SOC is hot.

SOC: system on a chip
for example,
mp3 player ,CD player...

HW/SW co-verification is hot.

eltonjohn said:

HERE IN THE US THERE IS NOTHING HOT .. NO DSP ,NO FPGA .. NO WIRELESS SO DON"T BE FOOLED ! ..EVERY THING IS IN STANDBY .. IF ANY ONE SAYS THE CONTRARY WELL HE BETTER GIVES SOME PROOFS .
OTHERWISE IS NOT GOOD TO GIVE FALSE HOPES !

Somebody called me with "A NICE FPGA CONSULTING JOB " a day ago .. I responded inquisitive and asked .. how much are they willing to pay .. The lady said : up to $17.00 an hour . I l laught at her and told her that i paid $20 an hour for guy that mows my grass .. and told her .. Be more POLITE next time !

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JOB means job and that should include all kinda of job and not only the consulting ones that can be compared to a mowerers job. if u go in detail you ought to find some good and fine jobs to land on to!

Hey man,
the hottest topic is verificationo with the free languages like systemC. Now a days its better not to spent money on specman . We acn use systemC for verification.

I thinks soc has some adventure, it will take some years to realize marketing.
a good design is many items ,not hot design.

Market decides everything

3C (Computing, Communications, Consumer)
Got each "C" above, got the world!

In my eyes, although Soc is very hot, many students think it as same as ASIC.So most of real soc products are under way.

fiber7 said:

Network processor is really the hootest area nowadays...

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jay_ec_engg:

Could you please explain me better what you think will be the future probable NP architectures?
I have no knowledge in this filed but I'am VERY intrested.

Which are the tasks of a NP?Is it reasonable to think on a die A LOT of NP instantiated to make layer 3 jobs?

Is it possible to implement a router engine in one ASIC with HIGH performances and HIGH speed (.....64 ports @ 40Gb/s each....@1Ghz or more....???.....)

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Let me try to explain, NP is a software programmable chip! It has the independant instruction set and complicatied architecture! In general ,it has two ports , one to connect the network physical port, and the other is to connet switch fabric. It focuses on processing packets ,such as , resoluting headers, classify the packets, routing table lookuping, modifying and trasfering packets.
NP 's designer pursues to the smallest intruction set ,and try best to process the packets of all the network protocols! It can update the software when the new protocols or applications occurs.
Nowadays, there are many NP products ,such as AMCC NP7510, Intel IXP 1200 2400, 2800, IBM , Motorola C-port, Ezchip,etc. And they can suppport the line speed trasfering , the fastest NP is 20Gbps at present!

NP is a product of SW/HW co-development, and the designer should have the enough experience and knowledge of SOC methodology ,computer architecure, OS, compiling theory,etc.
Many experts believe , NP is one of the core technologies of the next-generation network equipment! But at present , the high performance network equipment is still implemented with ASIC chips, because NP is not a perfect technology for customers at present!
The designers should set up the standards and specification for the NP as fast as possible!
www.npforum.org are engaging in building the standards and interface specification !

PCI Express ,for the Sysyem Side and SAS / SATA for the Storage side , GIgabit ethernet and SOC based on these protocols

hercules007 said:

Many experts believe , NP is one of the core technologies of the next-generation network equipment!

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So why AMCC and Vitesse ceased the development of new NPs?
And IBM sold its NP business... Not sure about Motorola C-Port, are new generations coming?

May be high difinition TV set codec.