January 2013 - Page 3 of 5 - Semiconductor Engineering

Smartphones Dial Up New RF Processes
By Mark LaPedus - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus The rapid shift towards smartphones and tablets is driving the need for new and low-power chips at finer geometries. Today, the latest application processors, integrated basebands and other digital cell-phone chips are 28nm planar devices. And it won’t be long before OEMs incorporate 20nm planar and finFET devices in their systems as a means to reduce power and extend batt... » read more

Stacked Die From A Networking Angle
By Mark LaPedus - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 1

By Mark LaPedus The first wave of 2.5D chips using silicon interposers are trickling out in the marketplace.FPGA vendor Xilinx was the first chipmaker to ship a 2.5D device, and Altera, Cisco, Huawei and IBM recently have talked about their respective 2.5D chip developments. Generally, Altera and Xilinx have taken a somewhat identical and straightforward approach. The two companies are sepa... » read more

Following The Money
By Jim Feldhan - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jim Feldhan There are many trends in the semiconductor industry that are easy to identify because the moves make a huge statement. A few of the major changes that we’ve all observed include the shift from a computer application focus to consumers, the growth of mobile devices, and the shift of semiconductor dominance from the U.S. to Japan to Asia Pacific. One of Semico’s jobs is to ... » read more

Lessons From Past Architecture Wars
By Marc David Levenson - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Marc David Levenson There was an interesting IEEE panel discussion in Silicon Valley recently, reviewing the microprocessor architecture wars of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. How did the Intel x86 architecture become so dominant when there were other capable designs, including more efficient RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) chips? How did the x86s overcome competition from Zilog, M... » read more

Hospital Privileges
By David Abercrombie - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By David Abercrombie In our double patterning (DP) conversations so far, we’ve discussed what it means to decompose a single layer into two masks, and identified typical configurations of polygons that can cause DP violations. We specifically discussed the most common odd cycle violations, and how to fix them by increasing the spaces between polygons. The reality, though, is that no matter h... » read more

Tightening the Purse Strings
By Christian Dieseldorff - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Christian Gregor Dieseldorff When forecasting fab spending, capacity ramps, and related technology node transitions, analysts must not only examine the semiconductor industry, but also track and consider economic factors such as GDP, political events, oil prices, unemployment rates, and consumer sentiments. The latest SEMI World Fab Forecast report, published at the end of November 2012, re... » read more

Calibre RealTime: Placing Signoff Verification into the Custom Designer’s Hands
By Various Writers - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

How to reduce custom/AMS design cycle time while improving design quality with on-demand, in-design, signoff-quality verification from Calibre RealTime. To download this white paper, click here. » read more

ST-Ericsson’s 28nm FD-SOI Smartphone/ Tablet Chip
By Various Writers - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Adele Hars In the last blog, we kicked off what promises to be an exciting year with the news that ST-Ericsson announced the NovaThorL8580 ModAp. It’s billed as “the world’s fastest and lowest-power integrated LTE smartphone platform,” is built on STMicroelectronics’ 28nm FD-SOI, and is sampling in Q1 2013. We said it was a game changer, and ST-E’s put together a really good... » read more

Fixing The Supply Chain
By Ed Sperling - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

For all the promise and subsequent anxiety about moving to the next process node or stacking die, the real problem isn’t technology. It isn’t even cost per transistor. It’s who will take responsibility when something goes wrong. Notice the word “when” rather than “if.” Rising complexity means that chips no longer can be fully verified, so errors are a given. Some errors are wor... » read more

ST-Ericsson 28nm FD-SOI/ARM Chip Hits 2.8GHz at CES
By Various Writers - 22 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ What a great start to 2013: at CES in Las Vegas, ST-Ericsson announced the NovaThor™ L8580 ModAp, “the world’s fastest and lowest-power integrated LTE smartphone platform.” This is the one that’s on STMicroelectronics’ 28nm FD-SOI, with sampling set for Q1 2013. And it’s a game changer – for users, fo... » read more

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