category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Striking A Balance On Efficiency, Performance, And Cost
By Ed Sperling - 11 Sep, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power-related issues such as voltage droop, application-specific processing elements, the impact of physical effects in advanced packaging, and the benefits of backside power delivery, with Hans Yeager, senior principal engineer, architecture, at Tenstorrent; Joe Davis, senior director for Calibre interfaces and EM/IR product m... » read more

Reusable Power Models
By Brian Bailey - 14 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Power is not a new concern, and proprietary models are available for some tasks, but the industry lacks standardization. The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) is hoping to help resolve that with an upcoming release of IEEE 2416, based on its Unified Power Model (UPM) work. The creation of any model is not to be taken lightly. There is a cost to its creation, verification and maintenance. ... » read more

CPU Performance Bottlenecks Limit Parallel Processing Speedups
By Bryon Moyer - 12 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Multi-core processors theoretically can run many threads of code in parallel, but some categories of operation currently bog down attempts to raise overall performance by parallelizing computing. Is it time to have accelerators for running highly parallel code? Standard processors have many CPUs, so it follows that cache coherency and synchronization can involve thousands of cycles of low-le... » read more

Analog Consolidation Spurs New Round Of Startups
By Bryon Moyer - 08 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

A new wave of startups is rising to meet the growing need for specialized analog customization in chip design projects, opening the door to more affordable custom designs. These startups are breathing new life into a sector, which as a result of consolidation has favored only the largest chipmakers. As larger analog companies acquire smaller ones, many companies that were previously engaged ... » read more

Power Delivery Challenged By Data Center Architectures
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Processor and data center architectures are changing in response to the higher voltage needs of servers running AI and large language models (LLMs). At one time, servers drew a few hundred watts for operation. But over the past few decades that has changed drastically due to a massive increase in the amount of data that needs to be processed and user demands to do it more quickly. NVIDIA's G... » read more

Voltage Drop Now Requires Dynamic Analysis
By Karen Heyman - 08 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

At one time a relatively infrequent occurrence, voltage drop is now a major impediment to reliability at advanced nodes. Decades ago, voltage drop was only an issue for very large and high-speed designs, where there was concern about supply lines delivering full voltage to transistors. As design margins have tightened in modern advanced designs, controlling voltage drop has become a requiremen... » read more

Where Power Savings Really Count
By Ed Sperling - 31 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss why and where improvements in architectures and data movement will have the biggest impact, with Hans Yeager, senior principal engineer, architecture, at Tenstorrent; Joe Davis, senior director for Calibre interfaces and EM/IR product management at Siemens EDA; Mo Faisal, CEO of Movellus; Trey Roessig, CTO and senior vice presi... » read more

Heat-Related Issues Impact Reliability In Advanced IC Designs
By Ann Mutschler - 18 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 1

Heat is becoming a much bigger problem in advanced-node chips and packages, causing critical electrons to leak out of DRAM, timing and reliability issues in 3D-ICs, and accelerated aging that are unique to different workloads. All types of circuitry are vulnerable to thermal effects. It can slow the movement of the electrons through wires, cause electromigration that shortens the lifespan of... » read more

IC Power Optimization Required, But More Difficult To Achieve
By Adam Kovac - 18 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

Power optimization is playing an increasingly vital role in chip and chip and system designs, but it's also becoming much harder to achieve as transistor density and system complexity continue to grow. This is especially evident with advanced packages, chiplets, and high-performance chips, all of which are becoming more common in complex designs. Inside data centers, racks of servers are str... » read more

Data Center Thermal Management Improves
By Karen Heyman - 18 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

Thermal issues are plaguing semiconductor design at every level, from chips developed with single-digit nanometer processes to 100,000-square-foot data centers. The underlying cause is too many devices or services that require increasing amounts of power, and too few opportunities for the resulting heat to dissipate. “Everybody wants to try to do more in a small volume of space,” said St... » read more

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