Author's Latest Posts


How To Stop Row Hammer Attacks


Row hammer is a well-publicized target for cyberattacks on DRAM, and there have been attempts to stop these attacks in DDR4 and DDR5, but with mixed results. The problem is that as density increases, distance decreases, making it more likely that flipped bit cell in one row can disturb a bit cell in another, and that bits flipped across an entire row can flip another row. Steven Woo, fellow and... » read more

What’s Changing In DRAM


More data requires more processing and more storage, because that data needs to be stored somewhere. What’s changing is that it’s no longer just about SRAM and DRAM. Today, multiple types of DRAM are used in the same devices, each with its own set of tradeoffs. C.S. Lin, marketing executive at Winbond, talks about the potential problems that causes, including mismatches in latency, and high... » read more

How Is The Chip Industry Really Doing?


Throughout 2023, the general consensus among chip industry watchers was that IC sales were flat to down, fueled by market saturation for smart phones and PCs and excess inventory and capacity in DRAM and flash. But that doesn't tell the whole story, which is becoming highly nuanced and complicated. Unlike in the past, understanding how the chip industry is faring is no longer a simple math f... » read more

Reducing Power In Data Centers


The rollout of generative AI, coupled with more data in general, is requiring data centers to run servers harder and longer. That, in turn, is generating more heat and accelerating aging, and to ensure these systems continue working over their projected lifetimes, chipmakers are building extra margin into chips. That increases the amount of energy required to run and cool them, and it can short... » read more

Using Deep Data For Improved Reliability Testing


Reliability testing always has been a challenge for semiconductor companies, but it’s becoming much more difficult as devices continue to shrink, as they’re integrated together in advanced packages, and as they’re utilized under different conditions with life expectancy that varies by application and use case. Nir Sever, senior director of business development at proteanTecs, and Luca Mor... » read more

Proprietary Vs. Commercial Chiplets


Large chipmakers are focusing on chiplets as the best path forward for integrating more functions into electronic devices. The challenge now is how to pull the rest of the chip industry along, creating a marketplace for third-party chiplets that can be chosen from a menu using specific criteria that can speed time to market, help to control costs, and behave as reliably as chiplets developed in... » read more

Next-Gen Power Integrity Challenges


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power integrity challenges and best practices in designs at 7nm and below, and in 2.5D and 3D-IC packages, with Chip Stratakos, partner, physical design at Microsoft; Mohit Jain, principal engineer at Qualcomm; Thomas Quan, director at TSMC; and Murat Becer, vice president at Ansys. What follows are excerpts of that conversatio... » read more

Very Short Reach SerDes In Data Centers


Speed is critical inside of data centers, and the distance that signals have to travel can have a big impact on time to results. But there are a number of variables that need to be considered, including what is an acceptable loss, how much power can be dissipated in a server rack, and what are the various connection options being used. Keivan Javadi Khasraghi, staff technical product manager at... » read more

Making Heterogeneous Integration More Predictable


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss problems and potential solutions in heterogeneous integration with Dick Otte, president and CEO of Promex Industries; Mike Kelly, vice president of chiplets/FCBGA integration at Amkor Technology; Shekhar Kapoor, senior director of product management at Synopsys; John Park, product management group director in Cadence's Custom I... » read more

Improving AI Productivity With AI


AI is showing up or proposed for nearly all aspects of chip design, but it also can be used to improve the performance of AI chips and to make engineers more productive earlier in the design process. Matt Graham, product management group director at Cadence, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the role of AI in identifying patterns that are too complex for the human brain to grasp, how t... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →