Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 7


Logic-in-memory with MoS2 Engineers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) built a logic-in-memory device using molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) as the channel material. MoS2 is a three-atom-thick 2D material and excellent semiconductor. The new chip is based on floating-gate field-effect transistors (FGFETs) that can hold electric charges for long periods. MoS2 is particularly se... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 1


Self-erasing chip Researchers from the University of Michigan developed self-erasing chips that could be used to prevent counterfeiting or detect tampering. The technology is based on a new material that temporarily stores energy, changing the color of the light it emits. It self-erases in a matter of days, or it can be erased on demand. "It's very hard to detect whether a device has been t... » read more

Elasticity Without Compromise


At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the available RAM on a physical machine dictated, and ultimately limited, the size of designs that Ansys HFSS could simulate. This prompted engineers to buy incredibly expensive pieces of hardware — well into the six figures — to solve their most challenging problems. By necessity, engineers learned to “divide and conquer” their largest, most ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 23


Graphene energy Researchers from the University of Arkansas, University of Pennsylvania, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid built a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current. "An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 17


NVMe controller for research Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a non-volatile memory express (NVMe) controller for storage devices and made it freely available to universities and research institutions in a bid to reduce research costs. Poor accessibility of NVMe controller IP is hampering academic and industrial research, the team argue... » read more

The Next Big Leap: Energy Optimization


The relationship between power and energy is technically simple, but its implication on the EDA flow is enormous. There are no tools or flows today that allow you to analyze, implement, and optimize a design for energy consumption, and getting to that point will require a paradigm shift within the semiconductor industry. The industry talks a lot about power, and power may have become a more ... » read more

Electronics For Quantum Communications


Our secure digital communications so far have functioned on the principle of key-based encryption. This involves generating a key of appropriate length, which is then used to encrypt the data. Because distributing the keys is difficult, the keys are reused rather than regularly generating new ones. The regular use of the keys opens up the encryption process to attacks by mathematical methods... » read more

Customizing Low-Power Platforms Using UPF Dynamic Properties


Low power design and verification engineers need a way to continuously probe various dynamic properties of UPF objects in order to monitor the current state of a verification strategy and utilize that information to develop custom low-power verification environments. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a reliable, formalized way to do this. Since availability of the dynamic properties of unif... » read more

Building Billions Of Batteryless Devices


Later this month, Arm will celebrate its 30 year anniversary and the engineering milestones that have resulted in more than 180 billion Arm-based chips being shipped in everything from sensors to smartphones to the world’s fastest supercomputer. In each of these cases, much of Arm’s success has been in our dedication to delivering the highest performance per watt. But while Arm may ha... » read more

The Expanding Universe Of MIPI Applications


It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a time when mobile phones had no cameras and displays were tiny monochrome LCDs capable of displaying a phone number and not much more. The iconic Nokia 3310 announced Sept. 1, 2000, had an 84 x 48 pixel monochrome display and went on to sell 126 million units worldwide. You may still have one in your junk drawer. By the time of the original iPhone... » read more

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