Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Chinese memory chip maker YMTC and dozens of other Chinese entities are "at risk" of being added to a trade blacklist as soon as Dec. 6, a U.S. Commerce Department official said in prepared remarks seen by Reuters. SMIC co-CEO Zhao Haijun said on an earnings call that recent export controls from the United States will have an "adverse impact" on the company's production. The U.K. has rule... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, mobility Infineon has a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to supply automaker Stellantis with CoolSiC “bare die” chips by reserving manufacturing capacity in the second half of the decade to the direct Tier 1 suppliers of Stellantis. CoolSiCs are Infineon’s silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductors. Stellantis will acquire aiMotive, a startup specializing in AI and autono... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools and IP Cadence announced that its IP for GDDR6 is now silicon-proven for TSMC’s N5 process technology. The IP consists of Cadence PHY,  controller design IP, and verification IP (VIP), and is targeted for very high-bandwidth memory applications. “The improved PHY and controller design IP for GDDR6 with DRAM data rates at 22Gbps in the TSMC N5 process is the fastest of the GDDR6 fami... » read more

High Performance Memory: Novel Lateral Double Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) With An Orthogonal Polarizer


A new technical paper titled "Lateral double magnetic tunnel junction device with orthogonal polarizer for high-performance magnetoresistive memory" was published by researchers at Hanyang University. Find the technical paper here. Published November 2022. Sin, S., Oh, S. Lateral double magnetic tunnel junction device with orthogonal polarizer for high-performance magnetoresistive memory.... » read more

Lithography Modeling: Data Augmentation Framework


A new technical paper titled "An Adversarial Active Sampling-based Data Augmentation Framework for Manufacturable Chip Design" was published by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, Nvidia, and the California Institute of Technology. Abstract: "Lithography modeling is a crucial problem in chip design to ensure a chip design mask is manufacturable. It requires rigorous simulation... » read more

Profile-Guided HW/SW Mechanism To Efficiently Reduce Branch Mispredictions In Data Center Applications (Best Paper Award)


A new technical paper titled "Whisper: Profile-Guided Branch Misprediction Elimination for Data Center Applications" was published by researchers at University of Michigan, ARM, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Texas A&M University. This work was awarded a best paper award at October's 2022 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)/Association for Computing Machin... » read more

Stabilizing A Hafnium Oxide-Based Thin Film When Sandwiched Between A Metal Substrate And An Electrode


A technical paper titled "Origin of Ferroelectric Phase Stabilization via the Clamping Effect in Ferroelectric Hafnium Zirconium Oxide Thin Films" was published by researchers at University of Virginia, Brown University, Sandia National Labs, and Oak Ridge National Lab. Funding was given by U.S. DOE's 3D Ferroelectric Microelectronics Energy Frontier Research Center and the SRC. "This study ... » read more

Approximate Adders Suitable For In-Memory Computing Using a Memristor Crossbar Array


A new technical paper titled "IMAGIN: Library of IMPLY and MAGIC NOR Based Approximate Adders for In-Memory Computing" was published by researchers at DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence) and Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati. "We developed a framework to generate approximate adder designs with varying output errors for 8, 12, and 16-bit adders. We imp... » read more

Memory and Energy-Efficient Batch Normalization Hardware


A new technical paper titled "LightNorm: Area and Energy-Efficient Batch Normalization Hardware for On-Device DNN Training" was published by researchers at DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology). The work was supported by Samsung Research Funding Incubation Center. Abstract: "When training early-stage deep neural networks (DNNs), generating intermediate features via con... » read more

The Rise Of Copper Wires In Automotive ICs


In 2011, the price of Gold (Au) surged to $1900/oz which had a drastic impact on Wirebonded ICs using Au wires. IC suppliers scrambled to convert from Au to copper (Cu) wire on as many products as they could. However, automotive ICs were reluctant to make the jump due to lack of reliability data and performance track-record. However, today’s automotive ICs are big users of Cu wires driven by ... » read more

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