Still Waiting For III-V Chips
By Mark LaPedus - 19 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

For years, chipmakers have been searching for an alternative material to replace traditional silicon in the channel for advanced CMOS devices at 7nm and beyond. There’s a good reason, too: At 7nm, silicon will likely run out of steam in the channel. Until recently, chipmakers were counting on III-V materials for the channels, at least for NFET. Compared to silicon, III-V materials provide ... » read more

Balancing On The Color Density Tightrope
By David Abercrombie - 19 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Balancing on wobbly tightropes is something that chip designers get pretty good at. For instance, there is a fine balance between optimizing performance and minimizing leakage in a design layout. Dealing with the new requirements that multi-patterning (MP) introduces into a design flow creates many new tightropes to walk. I tiptoed out on one of the rarely talked about ones in my last article�... » read more

Executive Insight: Frankwell Lin
By Ed Sperling - 18 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Frankwell Lin, president and co-founder of [getentity id="22866" e_name="Andes Technology"], to talk about the IoT, what's required in devices and what will likely change over the next few years. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What are the big market opportunities in the Asia/Pacific region? Lin: The big market is the [getkc id=... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 18
By Jesse Allen - 18 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Ansys' Justin Nescott digs up the top five engineering articles of the week. A thermal mapping microwave may make finding cold centers in nuked food a thing of the past. Plus, in hospitals your next meal might be delivered by a robot. Worried about your car being hacked? Maybe you should be. Mentor's John Day pulls out important points from the recent security report on wireless-enabled vehi... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 17
By Ann Mutschler - 17 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 2

Can you hear light? Silicon photonics has gained increasing attention as a key driver of lab-on-a-chip biosensors and of faster-than-electronics communication between computer chips. The technology builds on tiny structures known as silicon photonic wires. The wires work because light moves slower in the silicon core than in surrounding air and glass. Thus, the light is trapped inside the wire... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 17
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Swedish nano Sweden’s Lund University plans to build a pilot production facility for startups in the field of nanotechnology. The facility would be used for Swedish companies and researchers to build products. This is for companies who do not have the funds to build their own facilities or buy expensive equipment. The project originates from the successful research into nanowires at Lund ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 17
By Jesse Allen - 17 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

What can snails teach us about creating batteries? Evgenia Barannikova, a graduate student at University of Maryland, Baltimore County presented the current state of research in using biology to improve the properties of lithium ion batteries at the 59th annual meeting of the Biophysical Society, held Feb. 7-11 in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the inspirations for her research was the way t... » read more

Maglen: Multi-Beam E-Beam Inspection
By Mark LaPedus - 16 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 1

Wafer inspection, the science of finding defects on a wafer, is becoming more challenging and costly at each node. In fact, the ability to detect sub-30nm defects is challenging with today’s inspection tools, which are primarily based on two separate technologies—optical and e-beam. In the inspection flow, chipmakers first use e-beam inspection, mainly for engineering analysis. E-beam is... » read more

Week 36: A Trip To Houston
By Anne Cirkel - 13 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

I have to admit it, I am impressed. Actually “impressed” doesn’t really capture it. I’m awed. On Friday we had the DAC Technical Program Committee (TPC) meeting in Houston—147 members of the TPC spent the day discussing the submitted papers. It was quite a scene. All of us were in one large room, with each big table representing one subcommittee. By the end of the day in Houston, the ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 13 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

First Solar announced that Apple has committed $848 million for clean energy from First Solar’s California Flats Solar Project in Monterey County, Calif. Apple will receive electricity from 130 megawatts (MW) AC of the solar project under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA), the largest agreement in the industry to provide clean energy to a commercial end user. Applied Materials repor... » read more

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