February 2012 - Page 2 of 4 - Semiconductor Engineering

Different Tradeoffs
By Ed Sperling - 23 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling The push to “smaller, faster and cheaper” hasn’t changed since ICs were first introduced, but the context for those requirements is beginning to shift—with enormous consequences. What was once done on multiple chips continue to migrate to a single chip or package because of cost, but in some cases the decisions about goes where go well beyond an individual device to i... » read more

Experts At The Table: ESL Reality Check
By Ed Sperling - 22 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling System-Level Design sat down to discuss electronic-system-level design with Stephen Bailey, director of emerging technologies for the design verification technology group at Mentor Graphics; Michael McNamara, vice president and general manager of Cadence’s System-Level Division; Ghislain Kaiser, CEO of DOCEA Power, and Shawn McCloud, vice president of marketing at Calypto. Wha... » read more

Roundtable: ESL Grows As Processes Shrink
By Ed Sperling - 22 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

System-Level Design talks with Steve Bailey of Mentor Graphics, Michael (Mac) McNamara of Cadence Design Systems, Ghislain Kaiser of DOCEA Power and Shawn McCloud of Calypto about what will propel growth in the system-level design tools marketplace. [youtube vid=yBhLLN40mSE] » read more

Capex Disconnect
By Joanne Itow - 21 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Joanne Itow Most semiconductor companies have completed their 4th quarter 2011 earnings calls and announced their capital expenditure budgets for 2012. Current capex plans indicate a weaker spending year for the industry compared to 2011. Based on current announced plans, capex spending would fall 4.5% to $59.8 billion in 2012. Semico believes some companies may be miscalculating the market... » read more

Are Hardware Developers From Mars And Software Developers From Jupiter?
By Frank Schirrmeister - 21 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Schirrmeister In a recent discussion fellow Blogger Kurt Shuler, when talking about hardware and software designers, said something along the lines “Given languages like Verilog, both hardware and software developers really do software, for hardware designers the software is just getting fixed much sooner.” I intuitively agreed with him, but his comment inspired this post in which... » read more

Experts At The Table: Low-Power Verification
By Ed Sperling - 17 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss the problems of identifying and verifying power issues with Barry Pangrle, solutions architect for low-power design at Mentor Graphics; Krishna Balachandran, director of low-power verification marketing at Synopsys; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Will Ruby, senior director of technical sales and support at Apache Design; and... » read more

AL 2012 – Day 3
By Chris Mack - 16 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

I continue to focus on line-edge roughness in my own research.  This means that I attended papers in every conference in the symposium, since LER is an issue that cuts across all topics in lithography.  (To be truthful, I meant to go to a paper in the new etch conference that talked about LER, but never made it.)  LER is finally, in my opinion, getting the attention it deserves.  I believe,... » read more

AL 2012 – Day 2
By Chris Mack - 15 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

There is no place I’d rather be on Valentine’s Day than in San Jose surrounded by my friends and colleagues in lithography.  No wait, I didn’t mean that.  I miss my wife and two young daughters.  I don’t like traveling without them. While Valentine’s Day is the Hallmark holiday I despise the most, it does serve to remind me of the conflicted feelings of most business travelers w... » read more

AL 2012 – Day 1
By Chris Mack - 14 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

Attendance at this year’s Advanced Lithography Symposium is up 10% this year, to over 1500, though we still haven’t recovered from the huge drop in numbers that accompanied the economic collapse in 2009.  Still, the mood here is good.  When I ask people how they are doing the answer is almost universally the same:  busy.  And busy is what we will all be this week, trying to navigate the... » read more

AL 2012 – Day 4
By Chris Mack - 14 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

As expected, the first EUV session of the last day of the conference filled a large room.  It was time to hear the status of EUV tool development, in particular the EUV sources.  ASML started things off with a rosy recounting of the successes of 2011.  After installing their sixth NXE:3100 preproduction tool, ASML bragged of the 5300 EUV wafers processed at customer sites by these six tools ... » read more

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