CHIPS For America’s National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) Program


At this year’s Design Automation Conference, Jay Lewis, director of CHIPS for America National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) Program, gave a presentation on the status and direction of the Center, its priorities for this year and how the NSTC can change the long-term trajectory for innovation. Fig. 1: Dr. Jay Lewis, director of NSTC Program, CHIPS R&D Office at the Dept. o... » read more

Margin Sensors In The Wild


Back in March, I wrote up an article here that looked at how a proxy circuit could be used to measure variations in circuit performance as conditions changed in the operating environment. There were a couple of recent presentations on margin sensors at two of the big EDA vendors' customer engineering forums that we’ll look at as well as another product with an upcoming presentation at DAC. Ma... » read more

TSMC Uncorks A16 With Super Power Rail


TSMC showed off its forthcoming A16 process technology node, targeted for the second half of 2026, at its 30th North American Technology Symposium this week. As the foundry moves from nanometer to angstrom process numbering, the new nodes will be prefixed with an “A” designation (instead of “N”) and A16 is the first for TSMC. TSMC said that N2 is still tracking to a 2025 production s... » read more

TSMC: 10nm To Be Greater Than 10% Of 2017 Wafer Revenue


TSMC’s financial results for the 4th Quarter of 2016 were released on January 11, 2017 (PST) and showed that year-over-year fourth quarter revenue increased 28.8% and simultaneously net income and diluted EPS both increased 37.6%.  In U.S. dollars, TSMC’s fourth quarter revenue was $8.25 billion. TSMC's CFO, Ms. Lora Ho, reported that 2016 was a good year for TSMC and that the company set ... » read more

Green Computing: GPUs Strike Back


After the last Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference in June, I wrote an article here about how the custom designed chips from NRCPC (used in the Sunway TaihuLight) and PEZY Computing (used in the PEZY Shoubu) had jumped to the top of the Green500 list with the Sunway TaihuLight also remarkably topping the Top500 list. Well, six months after the report from the IEEE/ACM SC16 Con... » read more

Making Waves In Deep Learning


A little more than two and a half years ago I wrote Making Waves in Low-Power Design, an article about a company (at the time) called Wave Semiconductor. Fast forward the the recent Linley Processor Conference, Wave Computing’s CTO Chris Nicol gave the audience an update on the company’s eagerly awaited and soon (planned for October) to be taped-out 16K-core dataflow processor for deep lea... » read more

MediaTek Grabs Another Gear


Today, it seems to be all the rage for automotive manufacturers to try to continuously one up the competition by announcing a new transmission that has more gears or “speeds." (Popular Mechanics did a nice article about why you would want more gears.) Basically, transmission designers want to keep the engine operating at or near its peak operating efficiency point and extend the operating ran... » read more

China Tops Top500


The last time I wrote about the Green500, the Chinese machine Tianhe-2 was at the top of the Top500 list. At that point, Tianhe-2 had slipped from 49th to 64th on the Green500. Tianhe-2 has now slipped to second place on the Top500, only surpassed by yet another new Chinese machine, NRCPC’s Sunway TaihuLight. There has also been some consolidation between the Top500 and the Green500 lists: it... » read more

TSMC: Onward to 5nm


TSMC’s financial results for the Q4 of 2015 were released in January and showed an 8.5% revenue drop compared to the previous year, and a 3.5% decrease compared to Q3 (all in NT$). For the full year though, TSMC said it had again achieved record sales, with revenue for the full year up over last year by 10.6% in NT$ (5.7% in US$). President and co-CEO Mark Liu reported that TSMC sees a red... » read more

Automotive Electronic Power


Nick Hendricks: I was drag racing. I'm a drag racer. Detective Samson: You were drag racing. Nick Hendricks: [nods] Detective Samson: In a Prius. Nick Hendricks: I don't win a lot. —Horrible Bosses (2011) Automobiles are now a platform for multiple electronic devices. From controllers for complex hybrid drive systems like those found in the Toyota Prius to all types of entertainment s... » read more

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