Power/Performance Bits: April 30


Printed supercapacitors Researchers at Drexel University and Trinity College created ink for an inkjet printer from MXene, a highly conductive two-dimensional material, which could be used to print flexible energy storage components, such as supercapacitors, in any size or shape. The material shows promise as an ink thanks to its high conductivity and ability to apply easily to surfaces usi... » read more

System Bits: April 30


Future batteries could use a graphene sponge Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology devised a porous, sponge-like aerogel, made of reduced-graphene oxide, to serve as a freestanding electrode in the battery cell. This utilization has the potential to advance lithium sulfur batteries, which are said to possess a theoretical energy density about five times greater than lithi... » read more

Uhnder: Digital Radar Chips


Radar used to be slow, clunky, and expensive. That's changing quickly as tech companies begin bringing single-chip or single-package solutions to market, setting the stage for a price/performance battle in markets ranging from automotive to robotics. Uhnder, an Austin, Texas-based startup, is the first to roll out a single-chip radar solution that it claims is roughly 100X less expensive tha... » read more

Challenges In Using HLS For FPGA Design


High-level synthesis (HLS) tools, which transform C/C++ source code to Verilog/VHDL, have been commercially available for over 15 years. HLS tools from FPGA vendors and EDA companies promise improved productivity through a higher-level of abstraction, faster verification and quicker design iterations. For example, simulating your design in C/C++ can be 10 to 100x faster than simulating in RTL (... » read more

Focus Shifting From 2.5D To Fan-Outs For Lower Cost


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced packaging with Calvin Cheung, vice president of engineering at ASE; Walter Ng, vice president of business management at UMC; Ajay Lalwani, vice president of global manufacturing operations at eSilicon; Vic Kulkarni, vice president and chief strategist in the office of the CTO at ANSYS; and Tien Shiah, senior manager for memory at Samsung. W... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools and test Lam Research has developed a new self-maintaining or self-cleaning chamber for its etch tools. With the technology, Lam announced a new industry benchmark has been set for productivity in etch processing using its self-maintaining equipment. Etch process modules are typically cleaned weekly or monthly. Recently, Lam and a chipmaker reached the milestone of going 365 days... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Wing received an Air Carrier Certification from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin making commercial deliveries with drones. The Alphabet unit is cleared to deliver packages in southwestern Virginia. Wing has had a pilot program going in the vicinity of Canberra, Australia, and was recently permitted to make commercial deliveries with unmanned aerial vehicles in th... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


A new working group has been proposed by Accellera to focus on the standardization of analog/mixed signal extensions (AMS) for the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) standard. “Our ambition is to apply UVM for both digital and analog/mixed-signal verification,” said Martin Barnasconi, Accellera Technical Committee Chair. “The UVM-AMS PWG will assess the benefits of creating analog a... » read more

Rushing To The Edge


Virtually every major tech company has an "edge" marketing presentation these days, and some even have products they are calling edge devices. But the reality is that today no one is quite sure how to define the edge or what it will become, and any attempts to pigeon-hole it are premature. What is becoming clear is the edge is not simply an extension of the Internet of Things. It is the resu... » read more

Defining Verification


There was a time when the notion of rigorous verification was seen as being unnecessary and even wasteful. I can remember early in my career working on flight control computers. We did no functional verification and created no models. We prototyped it and ran some engineering tests through it, primarily to structurally verify the system. We did not test the functionality of the system – that ... » read more

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