Research Bits: April 25


Superconductor breakthrough — palladium Palladium may be a better superconductor than even nickelates (superconductors based on nickel), according to research by TU Wien working with Japanese universities. The research shows that palladates may be a ‘Goldilocks material’ in which it can continue its superconducting state at a higher temperature. "Palladium is directly one line below n... » read more

Research Bits: April 18


Simplified microwave photonic filter for 6G Researchers from Peking University developed a new chip-sized microwave photonic filter to separate communication signals from noise and suppress unwanted interference across the full radio frequency spectrum. “This new microwave filter chip has the potential to improve wireless communication, such as 6G, leading to faster internet connections, ... » read more

Chiplets: More Standards Needed


Recent months have seen new advances in chiplet standardization. For example, consortia such as Bunch of Wires (BoW) and Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) have made progress in developing standards for die-to-die (D2D) interfaces in a chiplet’s design. Far from being a new phenomenon in communication, these types of standards are established for all forms of wired and wireless com... » read more

Thermal Integrity Challenges Grow In 2.5D


Thermal integrity is becoming much harder to predict accurately in 2.5D and 3D-IC, creating a cascade of issues that can affect everything from how a system behaves to reliability in the field. Over the past decade, silicon interposer technology has evolved from a simple interconnect into a critical enabler for heterogeneous integration. Interposers today may contain tens of dies or chiplets... » read more

What Designers Need To Know About GAA


While only 12 years old, finFETs are reaching the end of the line. They are being supplanted by gate-all-around (GAA), starting at 3nm [1], which is expected to have a significant impact on how chips are designed. GAAs come in two main flavors today — nanosheets and nanowires. There is much confusion about nanosheets, and the difference between nanosheets and nanowires. The industry still ... » read more

How To Plan And Conduct Highly Accelerated Life Testing


Assessing the robustness of an electronic product is integral to successful design and performance. Highly accelerated life testing (HALT) is an important testing tool for this purpose, and its effectiveness can be maximized through careful planning prior to setup and detailed execution. What is HALT? HALT is the process of applying increased stressors to an electronic device to force failure... » read more

Transitioning To Photonics


Silicon photonics is undergoing a resurgence as traditional approaches for reducing power and heat become more difficult and expensive, opening the door to a whole new set of technological challenges and driving up demand for a skill set that is in short supply today. From a technology standpoint, photonics is extremely complex. Signals drift, they are modulated with heat, and structures lik... » read more

How eMRAM Addresses The Power Dilemma In Advanced-Node SoCs


By Rahul Thukral and Bhavana Chaurasia Our intelligent, interconnected, data-driven world demands more computation and capacity. Consider the variety of smart applications we now have. Cars can transport passengers to their destinations using local and remote AI decision-making. Robot vacuum cleaners keep our homes tidy, and smartwatches can detect a fall and call emergency services. With hi... » read more

Nightmare Fuel: The Hazards Of ML Hardware Accelerators


A major design challenge facing numerous silicon design teams in 2023 is building the right amount of machine learning (ML) performance capability into today’s silicon tape out in anticipation of what the state of the art (SOTA) ML inference models will look like in 2026 and beyond when that silicon will be used in devices in volume production. Given the continuing rapid rate of change in mac... » read more

DDR5 Memory Enables Next-Generation Computing


Computing main memory transitions may only happen once a decade, but when they do, it is a very exciting time in the industry. When JEDEC announced the publication of the JESD79-5 DDR5 SDRAM standard in 2021, it signaled the beginning of the transition to DDR5 server and client dual-inline memory modules (Server RDIMMs, Client UDIMMs and SODIMMs). We are now firmly on this path of enabling the ... » read more

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