category: Top Stories

category: Auto, Security & Edge AI

Simplifying And Speeding Up Verification
By Ed Sperling - 16 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 1

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss what's ahead for verification with Daniel Schostak, Arm fellow and verification architect; Ty Garibay, vice president of hardware engineering at Mythic; Balachandran Rajendran, CTO at Dell EMC; Saad Godil, director of applied deep learning research at Nvidia; Nasr Ullah, senior director of performance architecture at SiFive. What follows are excerpt... » read more

Interconnect Challenges Grow, Tools Lag
By Brian Bailey - 15 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 2

Interconnects are becoming much more problematic as devices shrink and the amount of data being moved around a system continues to rise. This limitation has shown up several times in the past, and it's happening again today. But when the interconnect becomes an issue, it cannot be solved in the same way issues are solved for other aspects of a chip. Typically it results in disruption in how ... » read more

Aging Problems At 5nm And Below
By Brian Bailey - 11 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 3

The mechanisms that cause aging in semiconductors have been known for a long time, but the concept did not concern most people because the expected lifetime of parts was far longer than their intended deployment in the field. In a short period of time, all of that has changed. As device geometries have become smaller, the issue has become more significant. At 5nm, it becomes an essential par... » read more

ESD Requirements Are Changing
By Bryon Moyer - 11 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 1

Standards for specifying a chip’s ability to withstand electrostatic discharge (ESD) are changing – in some cases, getting tougher, and in others, easing up. ESD protection has been on a path from a one-size-fits-all approach to one where a signal’s usage helps to determine what kind of protection it should get. Protecting chips from ESD damage has been a longstanding part of IC design... » read more

New Approaches For Dealing With Thermal Problems
By Ann Mutschler - 11 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

New thermal monitoring, simulation and analysis techniques are beginning to coalesce in chips developed at leading-edge nodes and in advanced packages in order to keep those devices running at optimal temperatures. This is particularly important in applications such as AI, automotive, data centers and 5G. Heat can kill a chip, but it also can cause more subtle effects such as premature aging... » read more

Fundamental Changes In Economics Of Chip Security
By Ed Sperling - 10 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

Protecting chips from cyberattacks is becoming more difficult, more expensive and much more resource-intensive, but it also is becoming increasingly necessary as some of those chips end up in mission-critical servers and in safety-critical applications such as automotive. Security has been on the semiconductor industry's radar for at least the past several years, despite spotty progress and ... » read more

Making Silicon Photonics Chips More Reliable
By Ed Sperling - 09 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

Silicon photonics has the ability to dramatically improve on-die and chip-to-chip communication within a package at extremely low power, but ensuring that signal integrity remains consistent over time isn't so simple. While this technology has been used commercially for at least the past decade, it never has achieved mainstream status. That's mostly due to the fact that Moore's Law scaling h... » read more

Using Fab Sensors To Reduce Auto Defects
By Anne Meixner - 09 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem has begun collaborating on ways to effectively use wafer data to meet the stringent quality and reliability requirements for automotive ICs. Silicon manufacturing companies are now leveraging equipment and inspection monitors to proactively identify impactful defects prior to electrical test. Using machine learning techniques, they combine the monitor ... » read more

Challenges In Making Better Medical Sensors
By SE Staff - 09 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

Now that COVID-19 pandemic has desensitized us to telemedicine and more at-home health monitoring, the way we receive health care probably has changed for good. The no-touch thermometer and our personal pulse oximeter are not just coveted gadgets now. They have true clinical use in what may become a “point-of-use” system. Point of use means we don’t have to go to the clinic to get screene... » read more

Configuring Processors In The Field
By Brian Bailey - 08 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

The convergence of two technologies, extensible processors and embedded FPGAs, is enabling the creation of processors that can be dynamically configured in the field. But it's not clear if there is a need for them or how difficult would it be to program them. This remains an open question even though there is evidence of its usefulness in the past and new products are expected to reach the mark... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

Copyright ©2013-2026 SMG   |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy