category: Piecing It Together

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Make Way For Flexible ICs
By Ed Sperling - 16 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 0

The push to develop intelligent sensors everywhere does not require everything to be on a silicon substrate. In fact, a growing part of the market increasingly is focused on flexible substrates. The market for printed sensors is roughly $3.6 billion today, according to a new report by IDTechEx. In a decade, that number is expected to grow to $4.5 billion, according to the firm, with growth i... » read more

Spreading Out The Cost At 3nm
By Ed Sperling - 18 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 5

The current model for semiconductor scaling doesn't add up. While it's possible that markets will consolidate around a few basic designs, the likelihood is that no single SoC will sell in enough volume to compensate for the increased cost of design, equipment, mask sets and significantly more testing and inspection. In fact, even with slew of derivative chips, it may not be enough to tip the ec... » read more

The Chemistry Of Semiconductors
By Ed Sperling - 21 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

At each new process node, the chemistry of chip manufacturing has become much more complex than at previous nodes. But at 5nm and below, it's going to get orders of magnitude more complex. For the first few decades, the chemistry of chips was largely shielded from view for most of the industry. Caustic gases were relatively well understood because they are a potential health hazard, but the ... » read more

Scaling At The Angstrom Level
By Ed Sperling - 16 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 0

It now appears likely that 2nm will happen, and possibly the next node or two beyond that. What isn't clear is what those chips will be used for, by whom, and what they ultimately will look like. The uncertainty isn't about the technical challenges. The semiconductor industry understands the implications of every step of the manufacturing process down to the sub-nanometer level, including ho... » read more

Is It Time To Decentralize The Supply Chain?
By Ed Sperling - 19 Mar, 2020 - Comments: 0

One of the key requirements in any engineered system is a backup plan. A single point of failure in safety-critical or mission-critical applications can lead to disaster, whether that involves a smart phone, a car, a bridge, an airplane, or a design, manufacturing or business process. So why has this been largely ignored across the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain? The answer is comp... » read more

The Risk Of Two Supply Chains
By Ed Sperling - 20 Feb, 2020 - Comments: 0

Ever since the Trump administration weaponized trade restrictions against individual companies — first ZTE, then Huawei — China has begun developing a second supply chain for electronics. Inside of China, this is viewed as a necessary step for survival. In April 2018, the U.S. government banned ZTE from sourcing U.S. components for seven years, nearly putting that company out of business... » read more

Is This The Year Of The Chiplet?
By Ed Sperling - 23 Jan, 2020 - Comments: 2

Customizing chips by choosing pre-characterized — and most likely hardened IP — from a menu of options appears to be gaining ground. It's rare to go to a conference these days without hearing chiplets being mentioned. At a time when end markets are splintering and more designs are unique, chiplets are viewed as a way to rapidly build a device using exactly what is required for a particul... » read more

Scaling, Packaging, And Partitioning
By Ed Sperling - 17 Dec, 2019 - Comments: 0

Prior to the finFET era, most chipmakers either focused on shrinking or packaging, but they rarely did both. Going forward, the two will be inseparable, and that will lead to big challenges with partitioning of data and processing. The key driver here, of course, is that device scaling no longer provides appreciable benefits in power, performance and cost. Nevertheless, scaling does provide ... » read more

Is There A Crossover Point For Mainstream Anymore?
By Ed Sperling - 21 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Until 28nm, it was generally assumed that process nodes would go mainstream one or two generations after they were introduced. So by the time the leading edge chips for smartphones and servers were being developed at 16/14nm and 10/7nm, it was assumed that developing a chip at 28nm would be less expensive, less complex, and that the process rule deck would shrink. That worked for decades. Th... » read more

Who’s Watching The Supply Chain?
By Ed Sperling - 17 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 0

Every company developing chips at the most advanced process nodes these days is using different architectures and heterogeneous processing and memory elements. There simply is no other way to get the kind of power/performance improvements needed to justify the expense of moving to a new process node. So while they will reap the benefits of traditional scaling, that alone is no longer enough. ... » read more

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