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Research Bits: July 18


Miniaturized ferroelectric FETs Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Hanyang University, King Abdulaziz University, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and University of Tokyo proposed a new ferroelectric FET (FE-FET) design with improved performance for both computing and memory. The transistor layers the two-dimensional semiconductor molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)... » read more

Research Bits: July 12


Predicting crystal orientation Researchers from Nagoya University and RIKEN trained an AI on optical photographs of polycrystalline silicon and used it to predict crystal orientation during manufacturing. They found that the AI successfully predicted the grain orientation distribution. “The time required for this measurement was about 1.5 hours for taking optical photographs, training the... » read more

Startup Funding: June 2023


June saw several large funding rounds, with seven of at least $100 million. Over half a billion dollars alone went to a Chinese company manufacturing silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors. The wide band gap material has seen steady interest from investors, particularly for its potential use in electric vehicles. Another of the month's mega-rounds went to a company designing RISC-V SoCs ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Worldwide semiconductor industry sales dropped 21% year-over-year in May to $40.7 billion, mostly driven by decreases in the Americas (-22%), Asia Pacific/All Other (-23%), and China (-29%). But there also were hints of a recovery. The three-month moving average showed a 1.7% increase in sales, with the largest increases in China (+3.9%) and Europe (+2%). “Despite continuing market sluggishne... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Keysight Technologies said it intends to acquire ESI Group for €913 million (~$998.6 million). ESI Group provides virtual prototyping solutions for the automotive and aerospace end markets that can create real-time digital twins to simulate a product's behavior during testing and real-life use. MLCommons announced the latest results from two MLPerf benchmark suites. One aims to measure the... » read more

Blog Review: June 28


In a podcast, Siemens' Spencer Acain discusses the role of AI and machine learning in IC verification and how it could help address noise by analyzing different signals from the diagnosis data to figure out the real root cause of a failure. Synopsys' Ian Land and Ron DiGiuseppe find that designers of aerospace microelectronics are applying lessons and technologies learned from the automotive... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


AMD plans to spend $135 million in Ireland over four years to boost its adaptive computing segment, formerly Xilinx. The investment will fund R&D projects for next generation AI, data center, networking, and 6G communications infrastructure. The company will also add up to 290 engineering and research positions. Argonne National Laboratory installed the final blade of its Aurora supercom... » read more

Blog Review: June 21


Synopsys' Vikram Bhatia identifies four trends driving the migration of EDA tools and chip design workloads to the cloud, from ever-increasing compute and time-to-market demands to advanced cybersecurity features. Cadence's Veena Parthan checks out how computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis can help improve aquaculture with sustainable fish cage nets that minimize stagnatio... » read more

Blog Review: June 14


Synopsys' Richard Solomon and Gary Ruggles examine the Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol and how it could unlock new ways of doing computing such as enabling efficient heterogeneous computing architectures, accelerating data-intensive workloads, and facilitating advanced real-time analytics. Cadence's Andre Baguenie explains how to convert an electrical signal to a logic value using the Ve... » read more

Research Bits: June 13


Converting heat to electricity Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder fabricated a device to boost the conversion of heat into electricity. The technique involves depositing hundreds of thousands of microscopic columns of gallium nitride atop a silicon wafer. Layers of silicon are then removed from the underside of the waf... » read more

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