3D Stacking For Performance And Efficiency


Moore’s Law scaling is slowing down and limited improvements in performance, power, area, and cost are available from one process node to the next. As a result, advanced packaging and 3D stacking technologies are taking a front seat as the key drivers for next-generation high-performance energy-efficient designs. These types of system-in-package (SiP) technologies require designers to reima... » read more

Energy Harvesting Shows New Signs of Life


Energy harvesting is seeing renewed activity in select markets, years after some high-profile attempts to build this into consumer electronics stalled out. Costs, manufacturing challenges, and market resistance kept this technology from moving forward, more than a decade after it was being touted as the best way forward for consumer electronics and devices that were hard to access. While sol... » read more

Meeting Fundamental Interface Requirements For Camera And Display With Integrated MIPI IP


Cameras and displays are used in cars, industrial and medical devices, smartphones and other mobile devices, and machine vision applications. Over the years, the required data for high resolution videos and images have increased, forcing camera and display SoCs to process more complex visual data. The MIPI Alliance offers a portfolio of camera and display interfaces that deliver differentiation... » read more

More Data Drives Focus On IC Energy Efficiency


Computing workloads are becoming increasingly interdependent, raising the complexity level for chip architects as they work out exactly where that computing should be done and how to optimize it for shrinking energy margins. At a fundamental level, there is now more data to compute and more urgency in getting results. This situation has forced a rethinking of how much data should be moved, w... » read more

PCB Design Rules For Electromagnetic Compatibility


When it comes to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and printed circuit boards (PCBs), rules are not meant to be broken. Following some simple guidelines for electromagnetic compatibility when designing PCBs will save time and costs. Simulation software can help. All high-speed signals on a PCB should be referenced to a solid plane. A current flowing in any trace on a PCB must complete the e... » read more

Improving Industrial Processes


Industrial image processing is one of the most important drivers of manufacturing automation today. The requirements on the cameras differ considerably depending on the application. Different measurement methods (2D, 2.5D, 3D), spatial and temporal resolution and scan rates can be employed. The resolution and dynamic range of the sensor are critical for optical inspection on manufacturing lines... » read more

PCI Express 5.0 Takes Center Stage For Data Centers


The demands on servers at the heart of data centers continue an inexorable rise. Responding to these demands, new platforms keep coming that deliver greater computing performance, have more memory and use faster interconnects. On the way at the end of this year and early 2022 are new server platforms that will take performance to a new level. These new platforms will transition to DDR5 DIMMs fo... » read more

National Security And Artificial Intelligence


The (U.S.) National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence recently published its final report. The report is 756 pages long, so I am not going to claim that I've read it all. I read the introduction and some of the conclusion, and the chapter on microelectronics (basically, semiconductors and advanced packaging). To give you a flavor, here are the opening paragraphs of the "Letter f... » read more

SiC MOSFETs In The Landscape Of Modern Power Devices


Over the years, low losses possible by high breakdown field made silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs extremely popular amongst engineers. At present, they are mostly used in areas where IGBTs (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors) have been the prevailing component of choice before. But which role do SiC MOSFETs play in today’s landscape of power devices? With SiC MOSFETs (Metal-Oxide-Semicond... » read more

Formal Verification Experiences


Several companies have used formal verification to perform silicon bug hunting. That is one of the most advanced usages of formal verification. It is a complex process that includes incorporating multiple sources of information and managing numerous success factors concurrently. This paper will present a “spiral refinement” bug hunt methodology that captures the success factors and guides t... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →