February 2017 - Semiconductor Engineering

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 28
By Mark LaPedus - 28 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

‘Big G’ gravitation measurements The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has unveiled a new coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The CMM, dubbed Xenos, makes measurements that involve “big G” or the universal constant of gravitation. Basically, there are two meanings for the constant of gravity. The first is Newton’s universal law of gravitation. For this, the spe... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 28
By Ann Mutschler - 28 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

Software robots have fights lasting years According to University of Oxford and Alan Turing Institute researchers, editing bots on Wikipedia undo vandalism, enforce bans, check spelling, create links and import content automatically, whereas other non-editing bots mine data, identify data or identify copyright infringements — sometimes with unpredictable consequences. The team looked at h... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 28
By Jesse Allen - 28 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

Power converter for IoT At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, researchers from MIT presented a new power converter that is efficient at a wide range of currents, which could be a boon for IoT sensors that have variable power requirements. The device maintains its efficiency at currents ranging from 500 picoamps to 1 milliamp, a span that encompasses a 200,000-fold increase in... » read more

Embedded FPGAs Come Of Age
By Ann Mutschler - 27 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

FPGAs increasingly are being viewed as a critical component in heterogeneous designs, ratcheting up their stature and the amount of attention being given to programmable devices. Once relegated to test chips that ultimately would be replaced by lower-power and higher-performance ASICs if volumes were sufficient, FPGAs have come a long way. Over the last 20 years programmable devices have mov... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 24 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers Recently, Intel announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. Targeted for 7nm processes, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years. As reported, the fab announcement was made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the White House. There is more to the story. Typically, Intel has two fabs for a gi... » read more

Optimizing DRAM Development Using Directed Self-Assembly (DSA)
By Coventor - 24 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

Directed Self-Assembly (DSA) is an emerging technology that has the ability to substantially improve lithographic manufacturing of semiconductor devices. In DSA, copolymer materials self-assemble to form nanoscale resolution patterns on the semiconductor substrate. DSA technologies hold the promise to substantially improve the resolution of existing lithographic processes (such as self-aligned ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design
By Jesse Allen - 24 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

M&A ARM made two acquisitions to add the new NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT) low power wide area connectivity standard to its designs: Mistbase, founded in 2015 in Sweden, provides a complete NB-IoT physical layer implementation solution, while London-based NextG-Com, founded in 2008, offers a complete layer two and three software stack for NB-IoT. Tools Synopsys released the latest versio... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT
By Jeff Dorsch - 24 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

M&A ARM Holdings this week announced the acquisition of two firms, Mistbase and NextG-Com, to help bring narrowband Internet of Things technology to its chip designs. In addition, the company announced the development of ARM Cordio-N radios to reduce the complexity of adopting cellular IoT connectivity. Meanwhile, Blu Wireless Technology of the U.K. reported that ARM made an equity investment ... » read more

AI Storm Brewing
By Ed Sperling - 23 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

AI is coming. Now what? The answer isn't clear, because after decades of research and development, AI is finally starting to become a force to reckon with. The proof is in the M&A activity underway right now. Big companies are willing to pay huge sums to get out in front of this shift. Here is a list of just some of the AI acquisitions announced or completed over the past few years: ... » read more

Could DVCon Be Better?
By Brian Bailey - 23 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

DVCon is undoubtedly the best conference in the industry if your interest is functional verification. In the past, it has also had a slant toward design. The focus is quite simply based on the standards activity going on within [getentity id="22028" e_name="Accellera"], the EDA industry's body that turns problems into solution in a short space of time. As those standards mature, they are handed... » read more

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