Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 30


Muscle-on-a-chip Harvard University has developed a human airway muscle-on-a-chip as a means to test new drugs for the treatment of asthma. There is an urgent need for a new breakthrough in this arena. The majority of drugs used to treat asthma have not changed in 50 years, according to researchers at Harvard. Asthma affects nearly 25 million people in the United States alone. Asthma, ac... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 30


Airway muscle-on-a-chip mimics asthma A Harvard University research team has developed a human airway muscle-on-a-chip that could be used to test new drugs as it accurately mimics the way smooth muscle contracts in the human airway, under normal circumstances and when exposed to asthma triggers. The chip also gives a window into the cellular and even subcellular responses within the tissue ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 30


A “perfect” solar absorber According to researchers at MIT, the key to creating a material that would be ideal for converting solar energy to heat is tuning the material’s spectrum of absorption just right: It should absorb virtually all wavelengths of light that reach Earth’s surface from the sun — but not much of the rest of the spectrum, since that would increase the energy that i... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Is the sky falling on the ATE market? The ATE market is expected to hit $2.8 billion in 2014, up from $2.28 billion in 2013, according to Pacific Crest Securities. “Overall, we are now modeling overall semiconductor test demand to decline by 2% in 2015, a significant change from our previous estimate of up 10%,” said Weston Twigg, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, in a report. “Te... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Synopsys rolled out a hybrid verification platform, which it said can shave months off design time. The platform acts like a bridge between emulation, FPGA prototyping, simulation, static and formal verification and debug. Mentor Graphics uncorked a new version of its embedded hypervisor, which includes better system configuration, debugging and hardware support. The hypervisor is aim... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 24


Cadence’s Brian Fuller captures Chris Rowen’s phylum classifications for data-efficient design—lots of insects and much bigger but fewer mammals. There are cognitive layers in between, as well. Check out the chart. Mentor’s Robin Bornoff digs into thermal runaway and how to determine when it will occur—and burn up a chip. There’s a video to illustrate just what can go wrong. ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 23


The annual IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) will take place in San Francisco from Dec. 15-17. As usual, there will be presentations on the latest technologies in a number of fields, such as semiconductors, bio‐sensors, energy harvesting, power devices, sensors, magnetics, spintronics, two-dimensional electronics, among others. Here’s just some of the papers that will be pr... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 23


Improved liquid battery Researchers at MIT, led by a materials chemistry professor, have improved a proposed liquid battery system that could enable renewable energy sources to compete with conventional power plants. Professor Donald Sadoway and some colleagues have already started a company to produce electrical-grid-scale liquid batteries, with layers of molten material that automatically... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 23


Contender emerges for 3D IC semiconductor material While silicon has few serious competitors as the material of choice in the electronics industry, transistors cannot keep shrinking to meet the needs of next-gen devices given the significant physical limitations of energy consumption and heat dissipation. To address this, researchers at Harvard University have achieved a reversible change in e... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Gartner predicts that by 2016 smartwatches will comprise about 40% of consumer wristworn devices. Gartner said that nine out of the top 10 smartphone vendors have entered the wearables market to date or are about to ship a first product, while a year ago only two vendors were in that space. The eBeam Initiative announced the completion of its third annual survey. In one of the highlights of ... » read more

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