Research Bits: Mar. 5


Anti-ambipolar transistor Materials scientists from the City University of Hong Kong propose using transistors made of mixed-dimensional nanowires and nanoflakes to create multivalued logic devices. By combining GaAsSb nanowires and MoS2 nanoflakes, the team created a hetero-transistor with anti-ambipolar transfer characteristics, in which positive (holes) and negative (electron) charge car... » read more

Efficient Streaming Language Models With Attention Sinks (MIT, Meta, CMU, NVIDIA)


A technical paper titled “Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinks” was published by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Meta AI, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and NVIDIA. Abstract: "Deploying Large Language Models (LLMs) in streaming applications such as multi-round dialogue, where long interactions are expected, is urgently needed but poses tw... » read more

Optimizing EDA Cloud Hardware And Workloads


Optimizing EDA hardware for the cloud can shorten the time required for large and complex simulations, but not all workloads will benefit equally, and much more can be done to improve those that can. Tens of thousands of GPUs and specialized accelerators, all working in parallel, add significant and elastic compute horsepower for complex designs. That allows design teams to explore various a... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. India approved the construction of two fabs and a packaging house, for a total investment of about $15.2 billion, according to multiple sources. One fab will be jointly owned by Tata and Taiwan's Powerchip. The second fab will be a joint investment between CG Power, Japan's Renesas Electronics, and Thailand's Stars Microelectronics. Tata will run t... » read more

Design Tool Think Tank Required


When I was in the EDA industry as a technologist, there were three main parts to my role. The first was to tell customers about new technologies being developed and tool extensions that would be appearing in the next release. These were features they might find beneficial both in the projects they were undertaking today, and even more so, would apply to future projects. Second, I would try and ... » read more

2.5D Integration: Big Chip Or Small PCB?


Defining whether a 2.5D device is a printed circuit board shrunk down to fit into a package, or is a chip that extends beyond the limits of a single die, may seem like hair-splitting semantics, but it can have significant consequences for the overall success of a design. Planar chips always have been limited by size of the reticle, which is about 858mm2. Beyond that, yield issues make the si... » read more

Commercial Chiplet Ecosystem May Be A Decade Away


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the challenges of establishing a commercial chiplet ecosystem with Frank Schirrmeister, vice president solutions and business development at Arteris; Mayank Bhatnagar, product marketing director in the Silicon Solutions Group at Cadence; Paul Karazuba, vice president of marketing at Expedera; Stephen Slater, EDA product mana... » read more

Brain-Inspired, Silicon Optimized


The 2024 International Solid State Circuits Conference was held this week in San Francisco. Submissions were up 40% and contributed to the quality of the papers accepted and the presentations given at the conference. The mood about the future of semiconductor technology was decidedly upbeat with predictions of a $1 trillion industry by 2030 and many expecting that the soaring demand for AI e... » read more

Accellera Preps New Standard For Clock-Domain Crossing


Part of the hierarchical development flow is about to get a lot simpler, thanks to a new standard being created by Accellera. What is less clear is how long will it take before users see any benefit. At the register transfer level (RTL), when a data signal passes between two flip flops, it initially is assumed that clocks are perfect. After clock-tree synthesis and place-and-route are perfor... » read more

What’s Next For Power Electronics? Beyond Silicon


For more than half a century, silicon has been the bedrock of power electronics. Yet as silicon meets its physical limitations in higher-power, higher-temperature applications, the industry’s relentless pursuit of more efficient power systems has ushered in the wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors era. The global WBG semiconductors market reached $1.6 billion in 2022, with an estimated CAGR of ... » read more

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