April 2014 - Page 6 of 10 - Semiconductor Engineering


Fill ‘Er Up With Hydrogen


Japan’s Nihon Keizai Newspaper reported recently that Toyota and Honda would release fuel cell vehicles (FCV) in 2015 at a price of 10 million yen ($98,000) or less. This follows a decline in popularity of electric vehicles due to limited range per charge. FCVs use a generator rather than a battery, which means they need to be filled with hydrogen. The current cost of an FCV is more than 1... » read more

Effectively Manage Material Obsolescence To Avoid Costly Surprises


This paper describes the solution that allows complete management and control for companies to optimize their business and their performance on commitment to customers, specifically with respect to effective management of material obsolescence. To view this paper, click here. » read more

DSP-Based Testing


ADC and DAC are the most typical mixed signal devices. In mixed signal testing, analog stimulus signal for an ADC is generated by an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) which employs a D/A converter inside, and an analog signal out of a DAC is measured by a digitizer or a sampler which employs an A/D converter inside. The stimulus signals for these devices are created using mathematical method, ... » read more

Mask Hotspots Are Escaping The Mask Shop


Although the overwhelming majority of wafer production issues at the 28nm-and- below process nodes are lithography- and OPC-related, the semiconductor industry is starting to see problems caused by mask hotspots: wafer-level production issues that are caused when the shapes specified by optical proximity correction (OPC) are not faithfully reproduced on the mask. Mask hotspots will account for ... » read more

Blog Review: April 16


Cadence’s Richard Goering attended a workshop on “extreme” scale design automation, which looked at where else EDA tools can be used—such as intelligent traffic lights. At least there are well-defined use cases. Mentor’s Nazita Saye has compiled five predictions from the 1964 New York World’s Fair that are worth revisiting. Three of them came true. Check out the ones that didn’... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 15


Smaller is not always better While Moore’s Law-esque shrinking has allowed for economies of scale in many industries, when it comes to nanomedicine, however, smaller is not always better, according to researchers at UCLA. They have determined that the diminutive size of nanowire-based biosensors -- that healthcare workers use to detect proteins that mark the onset of heart failure, cancer an... » read more

System Bits: April 15


Making game play more engaging Engineers at Stanford University have developed what could be the next big thing in interactive gaming: handheld game controllers that measure the player's physiology and alter the game play to make it more engaging. The prototype controller was born from research conducted in the lab of Gregory Kovacs, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, in collab... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: April 15


Self-assembled nano-walls Using a self-assembly process, Texas A&M University and the International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research have devised a new technology called “nano-walls.” [caption id="attachment_11488" align="alignnone" width="499"] Researchers use common spray gun to create self-assembling nanoparticle films. (Source: Texas A&M).[/caption] Researcher... » read more

A Guide To Advanced Process Design Kits


The increasing complexity of design enablement has prompted manufacturers to optimize the design process. New tools and techniques, thanks to next-generation hardware and software, have provided a new platform for semiconductor and wafer design. Advanced PDKs are the solution and have been developed by foundries to optimize the design process and leverage and reuse intellectual property (IP) an... » read more

Favorite Forecast Fallacies


It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. – An Old Danish Proverb. The GSA Silicon Summit was held on Thursday, April 10th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. The opening panel session was entitled Advancements in Nanoscale Processing. The panelists were Rob Aitken (ARM), Adam Brand (Applied Materials), Peter Huang (TSMC), Nick Kepler (VLSI Researc... » read more

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