More Manufacturing Issues, More Testing


Douglas Lefever, CEO of Advantest America, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about changes in test, the impact of advanced packaging, and business changes that are happening across the flow. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What are the big changes ahead in test? Lefever: It's less about inflection points and more like moving from algebra to calculus in the ... » read more

Evolution Of Data Center Networking Technology — IP And Beyond


Ethernet is ubiquitous—it is the core technology that defines the Internet and serves to connect the world in ways that people could not imagine even one generation ago. HPC clusters are working on solving the most challenging problems facing humanity—and cloud computing is the service hosting many of the application workloads struggling with these questions. While alternative network infra... » read more

Is A Guestimate Good Enough For Obtaining Failure Mode Distribution?


SoCs targeting automotive applications are required to meet certain safety and quality standards as described in ISO 26262. A quantitative approach to safety analysis involves performing Failure Mode Effects and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA). FMEDA is a systematic quantitative analysis technique to obtain subsystem/product level failure rates, failure modes and diagnostic capabilities of systemat... » read more

The Gargantuan 5G Chip Challenge


Blazing fast upload and download speeds for cellular data are coming, but making the technology function as expected throughout its expected lifetime is an enormous challenge that will require substantial changes across the entire chip ecosystem. While sub-6GHz is an evolutionary step from 4G LTE, the real promise of 5G kicks in with millimeter-wave (mmWave) technology. But these higher-freq... » read more

High-Quality Test And Embedded Analytics For Secure Applications


Designs for secure applications such as smart cards and those used in the defense industry require security to ensure sensitive data is inaccessible to outside agents. This used to be a somewhat niche requirement and the implementation of custom solutions to meet these specific requirements was common. However, with the explosion within the semiconductor industry of automotive and cyber-phys... » read more

Preventing Failures Before They Occur


A decade or so ago, when MEMS sensors were in the limelight, one of the touted applications was to install them on industrial or other equipment to get an advance warning if the equipment was approaching failure. Today, in-circuit monitoring brings the same promise. Are these competing technologies? Or can they be made to work together? “Almost all advanced tool manufacturing companies ... » read more

A Practical Approach To DFT For Large SoCs And AI Architectures, Part I


The traditional processors designed for general-purpose applications struggle to meet the computing demands and power budgets of artificial intelligence (AI) or machine leaning (ML) applications. Several semiconductor design companies are now developing dedicated AI/ML accelerators that are optimized for specific workloads such that they deliver much higher processing capabilities with much low... » read more

High-Quality Test And Embedded Analytics Are Vital For Secure SoCs


Applications like as smart cards and devices used in the defense industry require security to ensure that sensitive data is inaccessible to outside agents. This used to be a niche requirement met through custom solutions. However, now that automotive and cyber-physical systems are proliferating, the requirements around secure test and monitoring are becoming mainstream. The current best strateg... » read more

Increasing IP And SoC Debug Efficiency 10X With Intelligent Waveform Reuse


Design and verification reuse lies at the very heart of every modern chip development effort. A system on chip (SoC) project with billions of gates cannot possibly be completed in reasonable time without leveraging blocks from prior projects and commercial intellectual property (IP) offerings. These reused blocks are themselves challenging to develop since they are as large and complex as previ... » read more

Supply Chain Security And Counterfeit Detection Using UCT


The recent shortage of chip supply and long lead times prompted system makers to turn to second tier suppliers and distributors for fulfilling their semiconductor needs. This in turn has put the spotlight on the growing concern of fraudulent or counterfeited integrated circuits (ICs). Proteus deep data analytics based on Universal Chip Telemetry (UCT) provides a new approach to supply chain ... » read more

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