How To Cool 3D-ICs


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss how to cool 3D-ICs and what's missing from the tool chain today, with John Ferguson, senior director of product management at Siemens EDA; Mick Posner, senior product group director for chiplet at IP solutions in Cadence's Compute Solutions Group; Mo Faisal of Movellus; Chris Mueth, new opportunities business manager at Keysigh... » read more

Preparing For The Multiphysics Future Of 3D-ICs


3D integrated circuits (3D ICs) are emerging as a revolutionary approach to design, manufacturing and packaging in the semiconductor industry. Offering significant advantages in size, performance, power efficiency and cost, 3D ICs are poised to transform the landscape of electronic devices. However, with 3D ICs come new design and verification challenges that must be addressed to ensure success... » read more

How Multiphysics Is Powering The Future Of 3D-ICs


It’s surprising to learn that the idea of 3D integrated circuits (3D ICs) has been kicking around for over sixty years. Not long after the first MOS IC emerged in 1960, researchers were already thinking vertically. By 1983, Fujitsu manufactured the first 3D IC prototype using through-silicon via (TSV) technology, using laser beam recrystallization. That’s a long time for a good idea to catc... » read more

What Does Semiconductor Disruption Look Like?


When conducting interviews for my article on the incorporation of AI within EDA tools, Anand Thiruvengadam, senior director and head of AI product management at Synopsys, said, "AI has the potential to transform how customers do chip design. The entire EDA flow can be disrupted with AI." He is not alone in making this kind of statement. Each year, I do a predictions piece, and I ask about how A... » read more

AI Agents For UVM Generation: Challenges And Opportunities


By Yuheng Tang and Kexun Zhang In the last two years, the role of AI tools in developers' workflows has rapidly expanded. What were once simple "code completion" engines have since evolved into agents that can read documentation, test their own code, and improve via self-reflection. While AI has already begun enhancing RTL design workflows, its exploration in verification remains in early st... » read more

The Future Of SoC Design Is Data Movement


The semiconductor industry is experiencing rapid advances in chiplet adoption, high-bandwidth memory, Compute Express Link (CXL) fabrics, and automotive zonal architectures. As we move into the second half of 2025, the only sustainable path forward is a layered, physically aware, and automated interconnect methodology that can keep pace with escalating complexity. This article is Part Two of... » read more

Navigating The Challenges Of Group Design Projects


All over the world, governments and industry have come together to solve large-scale chip design challenges. Groups such as the U.S. Department of Defense’s Microelectronics Hubs (ME Commons), the EU Chips Act pilot lines, and Japan’s government-backed Rapidus consortium often consist of established companies, research institutes, academia, and startups – each of which brings different sk... » read more

Boosting AI Performance With CXL


As AI applications rapidly advance, AI models are being tasked with processing massive amounts of data containing billions – or even trillions – of parameters. Each large workload involves numerous iterations for data comparison, predictive calculations, and parameter results updating during training. Hence, there is a constant demand for flexible memory expansion and memory sharing among d... » read more

The Limits Of AI’s Role In EDA Tools


The world has been inspired by generative AI models like ChatGPT. These are very applicable to things like copilots and agentic AI, but the adoption of these models into EDA tools is less obvious. What may be appropriate, and can AI make EDA tools faster or better? EDA has been enabling Moore's Law for the past 40 years, and that has required pushing the limits of many of the algorithms and ... » read more

The Joy Of Quantum: Celebrating Wonder And Sharing The Magic


Every quantum scientist, educator, and enthusiast can recall that precise moment when quantum mechanics first captured their imagination. Perhaps it was the first time they truly grasped the concept of superposition—the realization that particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously until the very act of observation collapses them into definiteness. Maybe it was encountering Einstein's... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →