Author's Latest Posts


Why Build New Silicon?


You can’t turn around these days without hearing talk of our increasingly connected lives, tethered by the Internet of Everything (IoE), and cloud this, cloud that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking this next big thing because on many levels it is inspiring creativity, as all big things do. And the ramifications are still getting worked out as far as the impact on chip design, and t... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 12


Coaxing human stem cells to form human organs In a step toward personalized drug testing, MIT researchers have coaxed human stem cells to form complex tissues in a new technique, which also has near-term implications for growing organ-like tissues on a chip and that may ultimately allow personalized organs to be grown for transplant patients. The researchers said growing organs on demand, u... » read more

Sensors Enable ADAS


Under the hood, cars of today look nothing like those of a few decades ago. There are sophisticated safety and drivetrain monitoring features, software for interpreting and interacting with the outside world and modifying the inside environment, and a host of features that might have seemed impossible or even ridiculous in the past. And there's much more to come. Advanced driver assistance s... » read more

Driving CES


As a tech journalist, I have attended the Consumer Electronics Show a number of times over the past two decades, but do I miss it? If you haven’t been, it can be quite overwhelming given that it is aimed at consumers, so imagine loud music, flashing lights, and booth babes. It is also fun for us geeks from a technology perspective. Actually, it is interesting for anyone that likes to see ... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 5


Faster quantum dot entanglement Due to entanglement between distant quantum objects being an important ingredient for future information technologies, ETH Zurich researchers have developed a method with which such states can be created a thousand times faster than before. [caption id="attachment_24629" align="alignright" width="300"] In two entangled quantum objects the spins are in a super... » read more

Upcoming Hurdles For The Semiconductor Industry


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss upcoming challenges and hurdles to overcome for the semiconductor industry with Vic Kulkarni, senior vice president and general manager, RTL Power Business at Ansys; Chris Rowen, Fellow and CTO, IP Group at Cadence; Subramani Kengeri, vice president, Global Design Solutions at GLOBALFOUNDRIES; Simon Davidmann, CEO of Imperas Software; Michael Buehle... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 29


Optoelectronics built using existing manufacturing Using only processes found in existing microchip fabrication facilities, researchers at MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Colorado have produced a working optoelectronic microprocessor that computes electronically but uses light to move information. The researchers reminded that optical communications prom... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 23


Building MEMS at one-hundredth the cost The microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) market was $12 billion business in 2014, dominated by a handful of devices, such as accelerometers that reorient the screens of most smartphones. However, researchers at MIT pointed out that potentially useful MEMS have languished in development because they don’t have markets large enough to justify the initia... » read more

Bridging Hardware And Software


Since the advent of embedded systems there has been a struggle between hardware engineers trying to understand the mindset of their software counterparts, and vice versa. That struggle is alive and well today—and it's costing everyone money. This divide is rife with passion, territoriality and misunderstanding. It has delayed tapeouts, created errors and inefficiencies that take time and e... » read more

Why Test Is Changing


Test is undergoing a revolution in terms of how it is perceived, how it is performed and where it is done. For years, test was something of an afterthought. It was a separate operation that was done after the design was finished, or it was a self-contained module that had to be characterized for power, heat and electrical effects, but not much else. As more chips find their way into markets ... » read more

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