category: Opinion

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Is Maskless Lithography Coming Into Its Own?
By Katherine Derbyshire - 17 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Lithographers have always faced tradeoffs between speed and flexibility. Steppers are very good at printing hundreds or thousands of identical features onto hundreds or thousands of wafers. They are not especially good at handling surfaces with significant topography, though. Nor is customization feasible. Every exposure uses the same reticle. Direct write e-beam lithography has long been us... » read more

Are In-Person Conferences Sustainable?
By Brian Bailey - 27 Jul, 2023 - Comments: 2

DAC/Semicon are now over, and while I missed a large part of it due to a stomach bug, I increasingly have a stale taste in my mouth about in-person conferences in general. Let's split things up – an event such as DAC is both an academic conference and a trade show. It has been that way almost since its inception 60 years ago. There are many other conferences that are pure conferences, and the... » read more

The True Cost Of Software Changes
By Brian Bailey - 22 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 2

Safety and security are considered to be important in a growing number of markets and applications. Guidelines are put in place for the processes used to develop either the hardware or the software, but what they seem to ignore is that neither exists in a vacuum. They form a system when put together. Back when I was developing tools for hardware-software co-verification, there were fairly co... » read more

The Next Chip Shortages?
By Ed Sperling - 15 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

The rollout of chiplets and heterogeneous designs could have unexpected implications on a global scale, creating a whole new round of chip shortages that will be much harder to fix. It's impossible to say for certain what will happen here in the wake of massive changes in chip design and a fluid and unpredictable geopolitical situation. The trade war between the United States and China began... » read more

A Highly Wasteful Industry
By Brian Bailey - 25 May, 2023 - Comments: 1

The systems industry as a whole is not concerned about power. I know that is a bold statement, but I believe it to be true. The semiconductor industry is mildly concerned, but only indirectly. They care about power because thermal issues are limiting the functionality they can squeeze onto a chip, or in a package. Some users, such as data center operators, claim to care about power because i... » read more

Managing Water Supplies With Machine Learning
By Katherine Derbyshire - 18 May, 2023 - Comments: 0

From wet benches to cooling systems, fabs use vast amounts of water — millions of gallons per day at a typical foundry. In this era of climate change, though, water supplies are becoming less reliable and municipal water systems are becoming more restrictive. For example, local utilities might restrict a fab’s ability to draw from the public water supply, or might supply only treated wastew... » read more

Can AI Write RTL?
By Brian Bailey - 01 May, 2023 - Comments: 1

Just a few months ago, generative AI was just a promise about what would be possible in the future. Today, nearly everyone with an ounce of curiosity has tried ChatGPT. Most people appear to be somewhat impressed with what it can do, but at the same time see the limitations that it has. As Dean Drako, founder of several companies, told me: "Recently, I needed to write a patent. I described t... » read more

ReRAMs Look To Silicon For Silicon Compatibility
By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

For such a critical material, silicon oxide is not especially well understood. The semiconductor industry certainly understands how to grow high quality oxides with high breakdown voltages, but what happens in less ideal situations? What does the introduction of microstructure do? If there are regions that are oxygen-rich or silicon-rich relative to the stoichiometric SiO2 composition, how do t... » read more

RISC-V Disrupting EDA
By Brian Bailey - 23 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 3

The electronic design automation (EDA) industry started in the 1980s and primarily was driven by the test and PCB industries. The test industry was focused on simulation so that test vector sets could be developed and optimized. The PCB industry needed help managing complexity as system sizes grew. That complexity soon was eclipsed by IC complexity and the costs associated with making a mist... » read more

Big Shifts At Very Small Geometries
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

The number of changes across the semiconductor industry are accelerating and widening. There are more innovations, in more places, and in more applications. What follows is a small peek at just how many significant changes are afoot, where they are happening, and who's getting recognized for their efforts. Quantum computing, but hold the math The modern electronics industry rests on multip... » read more

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