Why Chips Fail, And What To Do About It


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss reliability of chips in the context of safety- and mission-critical systems, as well as increasing utilization due to an explosion in AI data, with Steve Pateras, vice president of marketing and business development at Synopsys; Noam Brousard, vice president of solutions engineering at proteanTecs; Harry Foster, chief verificat... » read more

Aftermarket Sensors Boost Yield In Wafer Fabs


Third-party sensors are being added into fab equipment to help boost yield and to extend the life of expensive tools, supplementing the sensors that come with equipment used in fabs. The data gleaned from those sensors has broad uses within the fab. It can measure process module performance, identify defect sources, and alert fabs of impending equipment failure. And when coupled with machine... » read more

Silicon Lifecycle Management Gains Steam


Silicon lifecycle management (SLM) is gaining significant traction, driven increasingly by stringent reliability requirements for safety-critical devices in aerospace, medical, and automotive. Improving reliability has been a discussion point for years, but it has become especially important with the use of chips designed at leading-edge nodes in both mission- and safety-critical application... » read more

Testing For Thermal Issues Becomes More Difficult


Increasingly complex and heterogeneous architectures, coupled with the adoption of high-performance materials, are making it much more difficult to identify and test for thermal issues in advanced packages. For a single SoC, compressing higher functionality into a smaller area concentrates the processing and makes thermal effects more predictable. But that processing can happen anywhere in a... » read more

Tools Needed To Track, Catalog Hardware Vulnerabilities


Monitoring for cyberattacks is a key component of hardware-based security, but what happens afterward is equally important. Logging and cataloging identified hardware vulnerabilities to ensure they are not repeated is essential for security. In fact, thousands of weak points have been identified as part of the chip design process, and even posted publicly online. Nevertheless, many companies... » read more

Radar, AI, And Increasing Autonomy Are Redefining Auto IC Designs


Increasing levels of autonomy in vehicles are fundamentally changing which technologies are chosen, how they are used and interact with each other, and how they will evolve throughout a vehicle's lifetime. Entire vehicle architectures are being reshaped continuously to enable the application of AI across a broad swath of functions, prompting increasing investment into technologies that were ... » read more

Where Cryptography Is Headed


Reports began surfacing in October that Chinese researchers used a quantum computer to crack military-grade AES 256-bit encryption. Those reports turned out to be wrong, but that did little to dampen concerns about what would happen if it was true. The looming threat of quantum computers breaking today's encryption, and the stockpiling of encrypted data in preparation for a time when it can ... » read more

Chip Companies Play Bigger Role In Shaping University Curricula


A shortage of senior engineers with the necessary skills and experience is forcing companies to hire and train fresh graduates, a more time-consuming process but one that allows them to rise through the ranks using the companies' preferred technology and systems. Universities and companies share the goal of helping a graduate become productive in the workplace as quickly as possible, and the... » read more

Aging, Complexity, And AI In Analog Design


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss abstraction in analog vs. digital, how analog circuits age, the growing role of AI, and why there is so much margin in analog designs, with Mo Faisal, president and CEO of Movellus; Hany Elhak, executive director of product management at Synopsys; Cedric Pujol, product manager at Keysight; and Pradeep Thiagarajan, principal pro... » read more

Slow Progress On Generative EDA


Progress is being made in generative EDA, but the lack of training data remains the biggest problem. Some areas are finding ways around this. Generative AI, driven by large language models (LLMs), stormed into the world just two years ago, and since then has worked its way into almost every aspect of our lives. Some people love it, others hate it, and some even give dire warnings about machi... » read more

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