A Sputnik Moment For Chips

By Ed Sperling - 02 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 5

Chip shortages are the new Sputnik moment, and they have created a sense of national and regional panic not seen since the days of the Cold War. For both the United States and Europe, those shortages have sparked some of the largest technology investments by government in the past half-century that are not strictly for the military — and by far the biggest involving semiconductors. Whi... » read more

Technical Papers: Organized, Timely, And Relevant

By Ed Sperling - 09 Mar, 2022 - Comments: 1

Engineers and scientists from every discipline linked to semiconductors have been struggling for years to find good research papers about trends and topics they care about, and the situation is only getting worse as the technology becomes more complex and the supply chain becomes more diverse and distributed. There are a slew of new issues in manufacturing, packaging, and design, and there a... » read more

Behind The Intel-GlobalFoundries Rumor

By Ed Sperling - 19 Jul, 2021 - Comments: 5

A Wall Street Journal report that Intel is looking to buy GlobalFoundries has sparked discussions across the industry. But what exactly this would mean, and why now versus a couple years ago, needs some context. There are layers upon layers of irony behind this would-be deal, and it dates back decades to some rather famous encounters. Consider former AMD CEO Jerry Sanders' 1991 comment that ... » read more

Structural Integrity Of Chips

By Ed Sperling - 23 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

A new challenge is on the horizon, and it's one that could have some interesting consequences for chip design — structural integrity. Ever since the introduction of finFETs and 3D NAND, the lines have been blurring between electrical and mechanical engineering. After some initial reports of fins collapsing or breaking, and variable distances between layers, chipmakers figured out how to so... » read more

Rethinking The Scaling Mantra

By Ed Sperling - 26 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

What makes a new chip better than a previous version, or a competitor's version, has been changing for some time. In most cases the key metrics are still performance and power, but what works for one application or use case increasingly is different from another. Advancements are rarely tied just to process nodes these days. Even the most die-hard proponents of Moore's Law recognize that the... » read more

How Secure Is The Package?

By Ed Sperling - 17 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 1

Advanced packaging is a viable way of extending the benefits of Moore's Law without the excessive cost of shrinking everything to fit on a single die, but it also raises some issues about security for which there are no clear answers at the moment. OSATs and foundries have been working the kinks out of how to put the pieces together in the most cost-effective and reliable way for the better ... » read more

Moore’s Law Enters The 4th Dimension

By Ed Sperling - 21 Aug, 2020 - Comments: 5

The basic idea that more transistors are better hasn't changed in more than half a century. In fact, the overriding theme of a number of semiconductor conferences this month is that we will never have enough compute capability or storage capacity. In the past, when the number of transistors in a given area actually did double every 18 to 24 months, increasing density per square millimeter fo... » read more

Make Way For Flexible ICs

By Ed Sperling - 16 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 0

The push to develop intelligent sensors everywhere does not require everything to be on a silicon substrate. In fact, a growing part of the market increasingly is focused on flexible substrates. The market for printed sensors is roughly $3.6 billion today, according to a new report by IDTechEx. In a decade, that number is expected to grow to $4.5 billion, according to the firm, with growth i... » read more

Spreading Out The Cost At 3nm

By Ed Sperling - 18 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 5

The current model for semiconductor scaling doesn't add up. While it's possible that markets will consolidate around a few basic designs, the likelihood is that no single SoC will sell in enough volume to compensate for the increased cost of design, equipment, mask sets and significantly more testing and inspection. In fact, even with slew of derivative chips, it may not be enough to tip the ec... » read more

The Chemistry Of Semiconductors

By Ed Sperling - 21 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

At each new process node, the chemistry of chip manufacturing has become much more complex than at previous nodes. But at 5nm and below, it's going to get orders of magnitude more complex. For the first few decades, the chemistry of chips was largely shielded from view for most of the industry. Caustic gases were relatively well understood because they are a potential health hazard, but the ... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

NAND Flash Targets 1,000 Layers

New techniques go beyond improved deposition and etching, but challenges stack up, too.

by Bryon Moyer

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.