What’s Missing In 2.5D EDA Tools


Gaps in EDA tool chains for 2.5D designs are limiting the adoption of this advanced packaging approach, which so far has been largely confined to high-performance computing. But as the rest of the chip industry begins migrating toward advanced packaging and chiplets, the EDA industry is starting to change direction. There are learning periods with all new technologies, and 2.5D advanced pack... » read more

Strategies For Detecting Sources Of Silent Data Corruption


Engineering teams are wrestling with how to identify the root causes of silent data corruption (SDC) in a timely and cost-effective way, but the solutions are turning out to be broader and more complex than simply fixing a single defect. This is particularly vexing for data center reliability, accessibility and serviceability (RAS) engineering teams, because even the best tools and methodolo... » read more

Speeding Up Design Closure


Increasing complexity and smaller process nodes make it far more difficult to achieve design closure for chips. There are more physical effects to model, including noise, cross-talk, and double switching effects, all of which can slow the design process. Solaiman Rahim, vice president of engineering for Synopsys’ EDA Group, talks about why it’s so important to analyze violations in design, ... » read more

Impacts Of Process Flow, Scaling, And Variability On Interconnect Performance


Virtual fabrication is used to evaluate the performance of interconnects (line and via resistance, capacitance, etc.) across pitches compatible with either EUV single exposure or SADP for three different process flows: single damascene, dual damascene, and semi-damascene (subtractive metal etch). The effects of process variation for the three flows are also investigated to determine the relativ... » read more

Solving The Reliability Problem Of Memristor-Based Artificial Neural Networks


A technical paper titled "ReMeCo: Reliable Memristor-Based in-Memory Neuromorphic Computation" was published by researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Tehran, and USC. Abstract: "Memristor-based in-memory neuromorphic computing systems promise a highly efficient implementation of vector-matrix multiplications, commonly used in artificial neural networks (ANNs). H... » read more

Wafer-Scale Variability In Photonic Devices & Effects On Circuits


A technical paper titled "Capturing the Effects of Spatial Process Variations in Silicon Photonic Circuits" was published by researchers at Photonics Research Group, Ghent University−IMEC. "We present in this paper a method to extract a granular map of the line width and thickness variation on a silicon photonics wafer. We propose a hierarchical model to separate the layout-dependent and l... » read more

Cutting Clock Costs On The Bleeding Edge Of Process Nodes


In a recent study done by McKinsey and IDC, we see that physical design and verification costs are increasing exponentially with shrinking transistor sizes. As figure 1 shows, physical design (PD) and pre-silicon verification costs are doubling each process leap. As companies leap from node to leading node, a natural question arises. Why is it becoming harder and more expensive to tapeout a chi... » read more

The Gargantuan 5G Chip Challenge


Blazing fast upload and download speeds for cellular data are coming, but making the technology function as expected throughout its expected lifetime is an enormous challenge that will require substantial changes across the entire chip ecosystem. While sub-6GHz is an evolutionary step from 4G LTE, the real promise of 5G kicks in with millimeter-wave (mmWave) technology. But these higher-freq... » read more

Understanding Electrical Line Resistance At Advanced Semiconductor Nodes


When evaluating shrinking metal linewidths in advanced semiconductor devices, bulk resistivity is not the sole materials property for deriving electrical resistance. At smaller line dimensions, local resistivity is dominated by grain boundary effects and surface scattering. Consequently, resistivity varies throughout a line, and resistance extraction needs to account for these secondary phenome... » read more

Robust Variation-Aware Smart Power Designs For Silicon Success


Power management ICs (PMICs) is a rapidly growing segment in the semiconductor industry. The growth has been fueled by the demand for Smart Power applications that include wearable electronics, mobile computing platforms, printers, hard disk drives (HDD), IoT devices, and the full array of automotive applications. According to a report from market research firm Coherent Market Insights, the gl... » read more

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