Research Bits: Oct. 25


Polarization for photonic processor Researchers from the University of Oxford and University of Exeter developed a photonic processor that uses multiple polarization channels, increasing information density. "We all know that the advantage of photonics over electronics is that light is faster and more functional over large bandwidths. So, our aim was to fully harness such advantages of phot... » read more

Research Bits: Oct. 18


Modular AI chip Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and Tsinghua University created a modular approach to building stackable, reconfigurable AI chips. The design comprises alternating layers of sensing and processing elements, along with LEDs t... » read more

HBM3 In The Data Center


Frank Ferro, senior director of product management at Rambus, talks about the forthcoming HBM3 standard, why this is so essential for AI chips and where the bottlenecks are today, what kinds of challenges are involved in working with this memory, and what impact chiplets and near-memory compute will have on HBM and bandwidth.     » read more

Complex Tradeoffs In Inferencing Chips


Designing AI/ML inferencing chips is emerging as a huge challenge due to the variety of applications and the highly specific power and performance needs for each of them. Put simply, one size does not fit all, and not all applications can afford a custom design. For example, in retail store tracking, it's acceptable to have a 5% or 10% margin of error for customers passing by a certain aisle... » read more

Foundational Changes In Chip Architectures


We take many things in the semiconductor world for granted, but what if some of the decisions made decades ago are no longer viable or optimal? We saw a small example with finFETs, where the planar transistor would no longer scale. Today we are facing several bigger disruptions that will have much larger ripple effects. Technology often progresses in a linear fashion. Each step provides incr... » read more

Designing A Better Clock Network


Laying the proper clock network architecture foundation makes all the difference for the best performance, power, and timing of a chip, particularly in advanced node SoCs packed with billions of transistors. Each transistor, which acts like a standard cell, needs a clock. An efficient clock network should ensure the switching transistors save power. In today’s advanced nodes, when a design... » read more

Dealing With Heat In Near-Memory Compute Architectures


The explosion in data forcing chipmakers to get much more granular about where logic and memory are placed on a die, how data is partitioned and prioritized to utilize those resources, and what the thermal impact will be if they are moved closer together on a die or in a package. For more than a decade, the industry has faced a basic problem — moving data can be more resource-intensive tha... » read more

Heterogeneous Integration Co-Design Won’t Be Easy


The days of “throwing it over the wall” are over. Heterogeneous integration is ushering in a new era of silicon chip design with collaboration at its core—one that lives or dies on seamless interaction between your analog and digital IC and package design teams. Heterogeneous integration is the use of advanced packaging technologies to combine smaller, discrete chiplets into one syste... » read more

The New Disruptive Force In High-End AIoT Markets


MediaTek is known for its SoC solutions in the mobile and consumer device markets. In fact, the smartphone market is now producing the most advanced and performant SoC designs on the planet. MediaTek is a vital part of this innovation. Each year it produces a range of chipsets for the mobile market, like the flagship Dimensity 9000 which adopted Arm’s v9 CPU and Mali-GPU technologies to del... » read more

Meeting Today’s Challenges For LVS


At least one thing is for certain in semiconductor development: bigger and more complex designs put lots of pressure on electronic design automation (EDA) tools and methodologies. Yesterday’s chip is today’s IP block, and entire racks of electronics are being packed into system-on-chip (SoC) devices. EDA tools must evolve constantly in order to keep pace with size and complexity while meeti... » read more

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