Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


SEMI , SEMI Europe and European Commission representatives, in consultation with semiconductor industry stakeholders, proposed initiatives to overcome the skills shortage in Europe’s microelectronics industry: Create an industry image campaign to raise public awareness on how technology is shaping the future, and how workers can establish careers in the semiconductor industry. Remove ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


RISC-V The European Union said it will spend the equivalent of $286.5 million on a high performance computing ecosystem based on RISC-V. According to the call for proposals, the aim of the project is to “establish a partnership between the EuroHPC JU and a consortium of industry, research organizations and institutions in HPC to the development of innovative HPC hardware and software technol... » read more

Multi-Beam Mask Writers Are A Game Changer


The eBeam Initiative’s 11th annual Luminaries survey in 2022 reported strong purchasing predictions for multi-beam mask writers, enabling both EUV and curvilinear photomask growth. A panel of experts debated remaining barriers to curvilinear photomask adoption during an event co-located with the SPIE Photomask Technology Conference in late September. Industry luminaries representing 44 compan... » read more

Comprehensive S-Parameter Verification Coverage With Analog FastSPICE


IC design is transforming at an accelerated pace along with fabrication technology. The need to incorporate more functionality has led to denser dies, multi-die chips, stacked 3D ICs and advanced packaging. Furthermore, design technology continues to progress towards supporting higher data rates to address the increasing demand for more and enhanced connectivity. We now must deal with much more... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, Mobility Automotive chip shortages will continue until 2025, according to reports in a Financial Times (FT) article. Demand for SiC power chips will remain high. Onsemi reportedly is already sold out of the power semiconductors. Archer Aviation’s Midnight eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) is listed in the Federal Register now by The U.S. Federal Aviation Administr... » read more

Readership Explosion


Every year, I use my last blog of the year to look back over the stories that have been published in the Systems and Design and Low Power-High Performance channels — the two channels that I write for — at Semiconductor Engineering. I am looking for the most read stories. I do this for a number of reasons, such as trying to gauge if readers' interests are changing, and the preferred type and... » read more

Designing For Multiple Die


Integrating multiple die or chiplets into a package is proving to be very different than putting them on the same die, where everything is developed at the same node using the same foundry process. As designs become more heterogeneous and disaggregated, they need to be modeled, properly floor-planned, verified, and debugged in the context of a system, rather than as individual components. Typi... » read more

Ensuring ESD Protection Verification With Industry-Standard Checks


Electronic design automation (EDA) verification of electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is a complex task. Different integrated circuit (IC) design companies use different ESD protection approaches, different design flows, and different verification tools. To establish a consistent and comprehensive ESD EDA verification flow, the ESD Association (ESDA) provides recommended ESD compliance ch... » read more

RISC-V Pushes Into The Mainstream


RISC-V cores are beginning to show up in heterogeneous SoCs and packages, shifting from one-off standalone designs toward mainstream applications where they are used for everything from accelerators and extra processing cores to security applications. These changes are subtle but significant. They point to a growing acceptance that chips or chiplets based on an open-source instruction set ar... » read more

Adapting To Broad Shifts Essential In 2022


Change creates opportunity, but not every company is able to respond quickly enough to take advantage of those opportunities. Others may respond too quickly, before they properly understand the implications. At the start of a typical year, optimism is in plentiful supply. Any positive trend is seen as continuing, and any negative is seen as turning around. Normally the later in the year that... » read more

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