January 2014 - Page 9 of 10 - Semiconductor Engineering


The Next Big Threat


In just the past year, tens of millions of Target store customers had their customer and credit card records stolen, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were hacked, Adobe software had a security breach, Yahoo! was infected with malware, and Snapchat was hit with a bug that exposed user phone numbers. And this was just what was reported in the mainstream media. The threat, it turns o... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing And Design


Crucial.com reveals a surprising way to gain more time for improving one's personal health: fix a slow computer. A nationwide survey revealed that U.S. adults think they waste an average of 16 minutes per day waiting for their computer to load or boot up. Equating to two hours each week and four days per year lost to the wiles of a slow computer, it's no surprise that 66% of Americans say that ... » read more

The Week In Review: System-Level Design


Cadence won a deal with Fraunhofer, which licensed its MPEG codecs for Tensilica HiFi DSP. (Cadence acquired Tensilica last year.) The AAC codecs combine speech and general-purpose audio into a unified system, which simplifies design because it works at any bit rate. Sonics won a deal with MediaTek, which licensed its NoC technology for an upcoming line of SoCs. MediaTek, based in Taiwan, is... » read more

What’s After Silicon?


As discussed in the first article in this series, germanium is one of the leading candidates to succeed silicon as the channel material for advanced transistors, and has been for several years. The fundamental challenges of germanium integration were detailed at length in 2007. Unfortunately, knowing what the issues are does not necessarily lead to a solution. When a MOSFET transistor turns ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Yield And Reliability Issues With Integrating IP


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of integrating IP in complex SoCs with Juan Rey, senior director of engineering at Mentor Graphics; Kevin Yee, product marketing director for Cadence’s SoC Realization Group; and Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at eSilicon. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Do we need to move to subsystems or more restri... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 8


How do you choose an embedded operating system—and do you even need one? Mentor’s Colin Walls looks at the options, and the reason why there are no simple answers. Cadence’s Richard Goering has evidence that Facebook is gaining in popularity for engineer. He’s not the first person to recognize this shift, but the big unanswered questions are, ‘What’s the average age of those use... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 7


Vanadium’s wonders Already prized for its extraordinary ability to change size, shape and physical identity, vanadium dioxide can now add muscle power to its attributes, researchers with Berkeley Lab reported. They have demonstrated a micro-sized robotic torsional muscle/motor made from vanadium dioxide that for its size is a thousand times more powerful than a human muscle, able to catapult... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 7


Climbing Terminator Robots Simon Fraser University has developed a family of climbing robots that mimic the stickiness of gecko lizard feet. Based on a “footpad terminator” adhesive technology, the robots could be used in space missions and on Earth. The climbing robot, called Abigaille, features six legs. This allows the robots to crawl on vertical and horizontal structures. The techno... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 7


Harvesting electricity In order to produce small amounts of electricity for portable devices and sensors, Georgia Tech researchers are developing a family of power generators that take advantage of the triboelectric effect. The researchers are using what’s technically known as the triboelectric effect to create surprising amounts of electric power by rubbing or touching two different mate... » read more

GlobalFoundries Names New CEO


Sanjay Jha, a former executive at Motorola Mobility and Qualcomm, has been named as the new chief executive of GlobalFoundries. In the position, Jha replaces Ajit Manocha, who served as CEO for the silicon foundry vendor since 2011. Manocha, who was an advisor to the company’s largest shareholder prior to being appointed CEO, will return to that role and will work closely with Jha on his ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →