Ed Sperling and Ann Mutschler

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Ed Sperling is editor in chief of Semiconductor Engineering. Ann Mutschler is executive editor.

Author's Latest Posts

Using AI To Glue Disparate IC Ecosystem Data

By Ed Sperling and Ann Mutschler - 26 Sep, 2024 - Comments: 0

AI holds the potential to change how companies interact throughout the global semiconductor ecosystem, gluing together different data types and processes that can be shared between companies that in the past had little or no direct connections. Chipmakers always have used abstraction layers to see the bigger picture of how the various components of a chip go together, allowing them to pinpoi... » read more

How To Build Resilience Into Chips

By Ed Sperling and Ann Mutschler - 27 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

Disaggregating chips into specialized processors, memories, and architectures is becoming necessary for continued improvements in performance and power, but it's also contributing to unusual and often unpredictable errors in hardware that are extremely difficult to find. The sources of those errors can include anything from timing errors in a particular sequence, to gaps in bonds between chi... » read more

Using Manufacturing Data To Boost Reliability

By Ed Sperling and Ann Mutschler - 07 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

As chipmakers turn to increasingly customized and complex heterogeneous designs to boost performance per watt, they also are demanding lower defectivity and higher yields to help offset the rising design and manufacturing costs. Solving those issues is a mammoth multi-vendor effort. There can be hundreds of process steps in fabs and packaging houses. And as feature sizes continue to shrink, ... » read more

Shifting Toward Data-Driven Chip Architectures

By Ed Sperling and Ann Mutschler - 16 Jun, 2021 - Comments: 0

An explosion in data is forcing chipmakers to rethink where to process data, which are the best types of processors and memories for different types of data, and how to structure, partition and prioritize the movement of raw and processed data. New chips from systems companies such as Google, Facebook, Alibaba, and IBM all incorporate this approach. So do those developed by vendors like Appl... » read more

New Architectures, Much Faster Chips

By Ed Sperling and Ann Mutschler - 31 Aug, 2020 - Comments: 0

The chip industry is making progress in multiple physical dimensions and with multiple architectural approaches, setting the stage for huge performance increases based on more modular and heterogeneous designs, new advanced packaging options, and continued scaling of digital logic for at least a couple more process nodes. A number of these changes have been discussed in recent conferences. I... » read more