Can Models Created With AI Be Trusted?


EDA models that are created using AI need to pass more stringent quality and cost benefit analysis compared to many AI applications in the broader industry. Money is hanging on the line if AI gets it wrong, and all the associated costs must be factored into the equation. Models are some of the most expensive things a development team can create, and it is important to understand the value th... » read more

Fundamental Issues In Computer Vision Still Unresolved


Given computer vision’s place as the cornerstone of an increasing number of applications from ADAS to medical diagnosis and robotics, it is critical that its weak points be mitigated, such as the ability to identify corner cases or if algorithms are trained on shallow datasets. While well-known bloopers are often the result of human decisions, there are also fundamental technical issues that ... » read more

Design Considerations In Photonics


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about what CMOS and photonics engineers need to know to successfully collaborate, with James Pond, fellow at Ansys; Gilles Lamant, distinguished engineer at Cadence; and Mitch Heins, business development manager for photonic solutions at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To view part one of this discussion,... » read more

Multi-Die Design Pushes Complexity To The Max


Multi-die/multi-chiplet design has thrown a wrench into the ability to manage design complexity, driving up costs per transistor, straining market windows, and sending the entire chip industry scrambling for new tools and methodologies. For multiple decades, the entire semiconductor design ecosystem — from EDA and IP providers to foundries and equipment makers — has evolved with the assu... » read more

Dealing With AI/ML Uncertainty


Despite their widespread popularity, large language models (LLMs) have several well-known design issues, the most notorious being hallucinations, in which an LLM tries to pass off its statistics-based concoctions as real-world facts. Hallucinations are examples of a fundamental, underlying issue with LLMs. The inner workings of LLMs, as well as other deep neural nets (DNNs), are only partly kno... » read more

Is There Any Hope For Asynchronous Design?


In an era when power has become a fundamental design constraint, questions persist about whether asynchronous logic has a role to play. It is a design style said to have significant benefits and yet has never resulted in more than a few experiments. Synchronous design utilizes a clock, where the clock frequency is set by the longest and slowest path in the design. That includes potential var... » read more

Navigating The GPU Revolution


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of GPU acceleration on mask design and production and other process technologies, with Aki Fujimura, CEO of D2S; Youping Zhang, head of ASML Brion; Yalin Xiong, senior vice president and general manager of the BBP and reticle products division at KLA; and Kostas Adam, vice president of engineering at Synopsys. What f... » read more

Predicting And Preventing Process Drift


Increasingly tight tolerances and rigorous demands for quality are forcing chipmakers and equipment manufacturers to ferret out minor process variances, which can create significant anomalies in device behavior and render a device non-functional. In the past, many of these variances were ignored. But for a growing number of applications, that's no longer possible. Even minor fluctuations in ... » read more

Electromigration Concerns Grow In Advanced Packages


The incessant demand for more speed in chips requires forcing more energy through ever-smaller devices, increasing current density and threatening long-term chip reliability. While this problem is well understood, it's becoming more difficult to contain in leading-edge designs. Of particular concern is electromigration, which is becoming more troublesome in advanced packages with multiple ch... » read more

What Works Best For Chiplets


The semiconductor industry is preparing for the migration from proprietary chiplet-based systems to a more open chiplet ecosystem, in which chiplets fabricated by different companies of various technologies and device nodes can be integrated in a single package with acceptable yield. To make this work as expected, the chip industry will have to solve a variety of well-documented technical an... » read more

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