Toward Domain-Specific EDA

By Brian Bailey - 26 Sep, 2022 - Comments: 0

More companies appear to be creating custom EDA tools, but it is not clear if this trend is accelerating and what it means for the mainstream EDA industry. Whenever there is change, there is opportunity. Change can come from new abstractions, new options for optimization, or new limitations that are imposed on a tool or flow. For example, the slowing of Moore's Law means that sufficient prog... » read more

Designing For Thermal

By Karen Heyman - 13 Sep, 2022 - Comments: 0

Heat has emerged as a major concern for semiconductors in every form factor, from digital watches to data centers, and it is becoming more of a problem at advanced nodes and in advanced packages where that heat is especially difficult to dissipate. Temperatures at the base of finFETs and GAA FETs can differ from those at the top of the transistor structures. They also can vary depending on h... » read more

MicroLEDs Move Toward Commercialization

By Laura Peters - 29 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 1

The market for MicroLED displays is heating up, fueled by a raft of innovations in design and manufacturing that can increase yield and reduce prices, making them competitive with LCD and OLED devices. MicroLED displays are brighter and higher contrast than their predecessors, and they are more efficient. Functional prototypes have been developed for watches, AR glasses, TVs, signage, and au... » read more

Big Changes In Architectures, Transistors, Materials

By Ed Sperling - 18 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers are gearing up for fundamental changes in architectures, materials, and basic structures like transistors and interconnects. The net result will be more process steps, increased complexity for each of those steps, and rising costs across the board. At the leading-edge, finFETs will run out of steam somewhere after the 3nm (30 angstrom) node. The three foundries still working at th... » read more

AI Power Consumption Exploding

By Brian Bailey - 15 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 2

Machine learning is on track to consume all the energy being supplied, a model that is costly, inefficient, and unsustainable. To a large extent, this is because the field is new, exciting, and rapidly growing. It is being designed to break new ground in terms of accuracy or capability. Today, that means bigger models and larger training sets, which require exponential increases in processin... » read more

Where Are The Autonomous Cars?

By Marie C. Baca - 08 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

Are we there yet? Governments, consumers, and engineers alike want to know how close the automotive world is to producing a fully autonomous Level 5 vehicle. While some experts say such vehicles could hit the road in the next few years, they're a shrinking minority. Most forecasts say a truly self-driving car is at least a decade away — and maybe much longer, because it requires disruptive... » read more

Scaling, Advanced Packaging, Or Both

By Ed Sperling - 01 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers are facing a growing number of challenges and tradeoffs at the leading edge, where the cost of process shrinks is already exorbitant and rising. While it's theoretically possible to scale digital logic to 10 angstroms (1nm) and below, the likelihood of a planar SoC being developed at that nodes appears increasingly unlikely. This is hardly shocking in an industry that has heard pr... » read more

Near-Threshold Computing Gets A Boost

By Brian Bailey - 25 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

Near-threshold computing has long been used for power-sensitive devices, but some surprising, unrelated advances are making it much easier to deploy. While near-threshold logic has been an essential technique for applications with the lowest power consumption, it always has been difficult to use. That is changing, and while it is unlikely to become a mainstream technique, it is certainly bec... » read more

Hybrid Bonding Moves Into The Fast Lane

By Laura Peters - 21 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 1

The industry’s unquenchable thirst for I/O density and faster connections between chips, particularly logic and cache memory, is transforming system designs to include 3D architectures, and hybrid bonding has become an essential component in that equation. Hybrid bonding involves die-to-wafer or wafer-to-wafer connection of copper pads that carry power and signals and the surrounding diele... » read more

Keeping IC Packages Cool

By Laura Peters and Karen Heyman - 07 Jun, 2022 - Comments: 0

Placing multiple chips into a package side-by-side can alleviate thermal issues, but as companies dive further into die stacking and denser packaging to boost performance and reduce power, they are wrestling with a whole new set of heat-related issues. The shift to advanced packaging enables chipmakers to meet demands for increasing bandwidth, clock speeds, and power density for high perform... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

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

New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency

Hot Chips 24: Large language models ratchet up pressure for sustainable computing and heterogeneous integration; data management becomes key differentiator.

by Ed Sperling

category: Special Reports

category: IoT, Security & Automotive