Who Designs Medical ICs


The medical chip market is heating up as sensor and processing technologies reach maturity, seeing off a frenzy of activity by systems companies and startups looking to plant a stake in a vast and largely untapped arena. As with any industry, there are a variety of business models, which can spread out the design burden over many companies or just one large one. This was limited in the past ... » read more

Always-On DSPs


There are tradeoffs between powering circuits down to save power and waking them up to respond to voice and visual commands. Prakash Madhvapathy, director of product marketing and product management at Cadence, talks about the best ways to deploy digital signal processors, why multiple DSPs are often better than just one, and what penalties there are for various approaches. » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 28


Measuring microdroplets The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found a new way for microscopes to measure the volumes of microdroplets. Using this technique, NIST has measured the volume of individual droplets smaller than 100 trillionths of a liter with an uncertainty of less than 1%. That represents a tenfold improvement compared to previous measurements, according ... » read more

2021 Top Tech Videos


While the world’s chip shortage dominated the 2021 headlines, the semiconductor industry blazed new trails with the increased electrification of cars, focused AI applications, improving power/performance, better utilization of data deluges, dealing with design challenges in advanced nodes and much more focus on chip security. Semiconductor Engineering’s Tech Talks reflected these focus a... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 28


Shrinking LEDs Researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) are working to make LEDs smaller. Micrometer-scale light-emitting diodes (μLEDs) could be an ideal building block for future microLED displays, but devices based on nitride-based alloys used to achieve a broad color range become poor emitters of light when shrunk to micrometer scales. “The main ... » read more

Batteries Take Center Stage


For any mobile electronic device, the biggest limiting factors are the size, age, type, and utilization of the batteries. Battery technology is improving on multiple fronts. The batteries themselves are becoming more efficient. They are storing more energy per unit of area, and work is underway to provide faster charging and to increase the percentage of that energy that can be used, as well... » read more

Semiconductor nanochannels in metallic carbon nanotubes by thermomechanical chirality alteration


Abstract: "Carbon nanotubes have a helical structure wherein the chirality determines whether they are metallic or semiconducting. Using in situ transmission electron microscopy, we applied heating and mechanical strain to alter the local chirality and thereby control the electronic properties of individual single-wall carbon nanotubes. A transition trend toward a larger chiral angle region wa... » read more

TAP-2.5D: A Thermally-Aware Chiplet Placement Methodology for 2.5D Systems


Abstract "Heterogeneous systems are commonly used today to sustain the historic benefits we have achieved through technology scaling. 2.5D integration technology provides a cost-effective solution for designing heterogeneous systems. The traditional physical design of a 2.5D heterogeneous system closely packs the chiplets to minimize wirelength, but this leads to a thermally-inefficient design... » read more

A Review on the Fabrication and Reliability of Three-Dimensional Integration Technologies for Microelectronic Packaging: Through-Si-via and Solder Bumping Process


Abstract "With the continuous miniaturization of electronic devices and the upcoming new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), fifth-generation cellular networks (5G), etc., the electronics industry is achieving high-speed, high-performance, and high-density electronic packaging. Three-dimensional (3D) Si-chip stacking using through-Si-via (TSV) and sol... » read more

Holistic Die-to-Die Interface Design Methodology for 2.5-D Multichip-Module Systems


Abstract: "More than Moore technologies can be supported by system-level diversification enabled by chiplet-based integrated systems within multichip modules (MCMs) and silicon interposer-based 2.5-D systems. The division of large system-on-chip dies into smaller chiplets with different technology nodes specific to the chiplet application requirement enables the performance enhancement at the ... » read more

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