category: Special Reports

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

A Crisis In DoD’s Trusted Foundry Program?
By Mark LaPedus - 22 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 0

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Trusted Foundry program is in flux due to GlobalFoundries’ recent decision to put 7nm on hold, raising national security concerns across the U.S. defense community. U.S. DoD and military/aerospace chip customers currently have access to U.S.-based “secure” foundry capacity down to 14nm, but that's where it ends. No other foundries provide similar “s... » read more

Power Delivery Affecting Performance At 7nm
By Brian Bailey - 11 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 4

Complex interactions and dependencies at 7nm and beyond can create unexpected performance drops in chips that cannot always be caught by signoff tools. This isn't for lack of effort. The amount of time spent trying to determine if an advanced-node chip will work after it is fabricated has been rising steadily for several process nodes. Additional design rules handle everything from variation... » read more

RISC-V Inches Toward The Center
By Ann Mutschler - 01 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 1

RISC-V is pushing further into the mainstream, showing up across a wide swath of designs and garnering support from a long and still-growing list of chipmakers, tools vendors, universities and foundries. In most cases it is being used as a complementary processor than a replacement for something else, but that could change in the future. What makes RISC-V particularly attractive to chipmaker... » read more

People Vs. Self-Driving Cars
By SE Staff - 12 Sep, 2018 - Comments: 7

If you’re a screenwriter—or a car salesman—you’re already thinking of ways to write non-sci-fi self-driving cars into a movie script. Automobiles have been integral to the plots of gritty noir crime movies, heist flicks, romantic comedies, and obviously, road movies. What's clear is the self-driving car won’t be the ideal getaway vehicle anymore, particularly if there is no steerin... » read more

Big Changes For Mainstream Chip Architectures
By Ed Sperling - 23 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 3

Chipmakers are working on new architectures that significantly increase the amount of data that can be processed per watt and per clock cycle, setting the stage for one of the biggest shifts in chip architectures in decades. All of the major chipmakers and systems vendors are changing direction, setting off an architectural race that includes everything from how data is read and written in m... » read more

3D NAND Flash Wars Begin
By Mark LaPedus - 20 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 0

3D NAND suppliers are gearing up for a new battle amid a period of price and competitive pressures, racing each other to the next technology generations. Competition is intensifying as a new player enters the 3D NAND market—China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). Backed by billions of dollars in funding from the Chinese government, YMTC recently introduced its first 3D NAND techn... » read more

Auto Chip Test Getting Harder
By Kevin Fogarty - 06 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 3

Chipmakers and test/validation companies are helping lead the effort to develop self-driving cars, but they are facing a wide range of technical and even cultural barriers. Advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) already are the most complex systems by far in modern cars, the best of which hover between Level 2 and Level 3 on the five-step autonomy ladder maintained by the Society of Automotiv... » read more

Safety, Security And PPA Tradeoffs
By Brian Bailey - 23 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Safety and security are emerging as key design tradeoffs as chips are added into safety-critical markets, adding even more complexity into an already complicated optimization process. In the early days of semiconductor design, performance and area were traded off against each other. Then power became important, and the main tradeoffs became power, performance and area (PPA). But as chips inc... » read more

Security Holes In Machine Learning And AI
By Ed Sperling - 09 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Machine learning and AI developers are starting to examine the integrity of training data, which in some cases will be used to train millions or even billions of devices. But this is the beginning of what will become a mammoth effort, because today no one is quite sure how that training data can be corrupted, or what to do about it if it is corrupted. Machine learning, deep learning and arti... » read more

Big Trouble At 3nm
By Mark LaPedus - 21 Jun, 2018 - Comments: 0

As chipmakers begin to ramp up 10nm/7nm technologies in the market, vendors are also gearing up for the development of a next-generation transistor type at 3nm. Some have announced specific plans at 3nm, but the transition to this node is expected to be a long and bumpy one, filled with a slew of technical and cost challenges. For example, the design cost for a 3nm chip could exceed an eye-p... » read more

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