Why Data Is So Difficult To Protect In AI Chips


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss a wide range of hardware security issues and possible solutions with Norman Chang, chief technologist for the Semiconductor Business Unit at ANSYS; Helena Handschuh, fellow at Rambus, and Mike Borza, principal security technologist at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. The first part of this discussion ca... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 25


Mentor's Dave Rich points out that unexpected values from a constraint solver can often be explained by how Verilog expression evaluation rules affect the solution space of SystemVerilog constraints. Cadence's Madhavi Rao points to the need for new and updated safety and cybersecurity standards for autonomous vehicles and highlights one of the most challenging parts of AV deployment. A Sy... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 24


Free flow electricity Researchers have made some new breakthroughs in the emerging field of Weyl fermions and semi-metals, a move that could one day enable free flow electricity in systems. In 2015, Princeton University and others finally proved a massless particle that had been theorized for 85 years--the Weyl fermion. A fermion is a subatomic particle. Proposed by the mathematician and... » read more

Driving With Chiplets


The first examples of the upper class of vehicles that can drive autonomously on the highway already have arrived on the market or will be introduced to the market in the coming years. Travel on the highway was selected as the first application because the number of objects that have to be taken into account in front of, next to, and behind the vehicle is manageable. This means the required ... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 24


Quantum states Many companies and academic researchers are working on quantum computing technology, including the University of Buffalo. New research on two-dimensional tungsten disulfide (WS2) could open the door to advances in quantum computing, UB reports. In a paper published Sept. 13 in Nature Communications, scientists report that they can manipulate the electronic properties of th... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 24


Textiles for energy storage Scientists at RMIT University developed a way to laser print waterproof textiles with graphene supercapacitors for embedded energy storage. The process takes three minutes to create a 10x10cm patch. The electronic textile is based on nylon coated with PDMS on one side for waterproofing. The other side was paint coated with graphene oxide and a binder to form thin... » read more

The Race To Next-Gen 2.5D/3D Packages


Several companies are racing each other to develop a new class of 2.5D and 3D packages based on various next-generation interconnect technologies. Intel, TSMC and others are exploring or developing future packages based on one emerging interconnect scheme, called copper-to-copper hybrid bonding. This technology provides a way to stack advanced dies using copper connections at the chip level,... » read more

Memory Subsystems In Edge Inferencing Chips


Geoff Tate, CEO of Flex Logix, talks about key issues in a memory subsystem in an inferencing chip, how factors like heat can affect performance, and where these kinds of chips will be used. » read more

Scaling Battery Technology


Batteries are an essential ingredient for the growth of electronics from small devices used for IoT as well as large batteries for electric cars. Historically, battery energy density improves 5%-8% per year. While this is much slower than the historical improvements from Moore’s Law, it’s still the kind of growth that can result in leaps in efficiency, opening the door for a better experien... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools The confidence level of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography continues to grow as the technology moves into production, but the EUV mask infrastructure remains a mixed picture, according to new surveys released by the eBeam Initiative. D2S has developed new hardware and software that enables a long-awaited technology--full-chip masks using inverse lithography technology (ILT). ... » read more

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