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Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 28


More powerful, sensitive wearables With their special electronic and optical properties, nanomaterials such as graphene and molybdenum sulfide have created excitement among UCLA scientists for their potential to revolutionize transistors and circuits. Research is underway there that has the potential to increase the efficiency and capabilities of the 2D layered semiconductors used in high-s... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 28


Sensing objects without looking at them In a technique known as “interaction-free measurement,” Yale engineers have created a chip-scale device that senses the presence of an object without interacting with it by using the wave-particle duality of single photons. This work could help propel the field of quantum information processing. The researchers explained that the device uses silic... » read more

Filling In The Gaps For Mixed-Signal Verification


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss mixed-signal [getkc id="10" kc_name="Verification"] with Haiko Morgenstern, Mixed-Signal Verification Group Staff Engineer at Infineon; Dr. Gernot Koch, CAD Manager at Micronas; Pierluigi Daglio, AMS Design Verification Flows Manager at STMicroelectronics; and Helene Thibieroz, AMS marketing manager at [getentity id="22035" comment="Synopsys"]. What... » read more

Advanced Nodes Drive Changing EDA Requirements


With new technical requirements of today’s bleeding edge manufacturing processes propelling the ecosystem of semiconductor foundries, EDA tool suppliers and IP developers, work is being done behind the scenes like a well-conducted orchestra to make sure customer designs can flow through a foundry when the time comes. One of the areas in the design process where new processes are felt acute... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 21


Sound power While medical researchers would like to plant tiny electronic devices deep inside our bodies to monitor biological processes and deliver pinpoint therapies or relieve pain, so far engineers have been unable to make such devices small and useful enough. Providing power to the implants has been one stumbling block, and the use of wires or batteries to deliver power make implants ... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 21


Simplified superconducting circuits Computer chips with superconducting circuits, which means they have no electrical resistance, are said to be 50 to 100 times as energy-efficient as today’s technology. Superconducting chips are also said to have greater processing power: Superconducting circuits that use so-called Josephson junctions have been clocked at 770 gigahertz, or 500 times the spe... » read more

High-Level Gaps Emerge


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the attributes of a high-level, front-end design flow with Bernard Murphy, CTO at [getentity id="22026" e_name="Atrenta"]; Leah Clark, associate technical director for digital video technology at Broadcom; Phil Bishop, vice president of the system level design system & verification group at [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]; and Jon McDon... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 14


Exotic states of light and matter In research that merges two areas that have only been studied separately, ETH researchers are studying solid-state physics and quantum optics as a potential first step toward quantum computing. Specifically, the physicists are looking between tiny mirrors to a special layer of the semiconductor material gallium arsenide, prepared in such a way that the elec... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 14


Safety first A technology designed for conventional lithium-ion batteries by Stanford University researchers warns the user before it overheats and bursts into flames. The goal was to create an early-warning system to saves lives and property, by detecting problems that occur during the normal operation of a battery, the researchers said. The technology does not apply to batteries damaged i... » read more

Architecture Versus Silicon


For many, if not most designs today, power is everything. Determining where power is being lost is critical to making sure the design is optimized. So where to begin? To this end, it is useful to go back to the fundamentals of what power is and what power consumption is, noted Paul Traynar, software architect at [getentity id="22021" comment="ANSYS/Apache"]. “Power is proportional to capac... » read more

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