category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Power Semis Usher In The Silicon Carbide Era
By Laura Peters - 21 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 1

Silicon carbide production is ramping quickly, driven by end market demand in automotive and price parity with silicon. Many thousands of power semiconductor modules already are in use in electric vehicles for on-board charging, traction inversion, and DC-to-DC conversion. Today, most of those are fabricated using silicon-based IGBTs. A shift to silicon carbide-based MOSFETs doubles the powe... » read more

Directed Self-Assembly Finds Its Footing
By Gregory Haley - 17 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Ten years ago, when the industry was struggling to deliver EUV lithography, directed self-assembly (DSA) roared to the forefront of research and development for virtually every manufacturer determined to extend the limits of 193i. It was the hot topic at of the 2012 SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference, with one attendee from Applied Materials comparing its potential to disrupt the industry to ... » read more

Securing Chip Manufacturing Against Growing Cyber Threats
By Anne Meixner - 17 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor manufacturers are wrestling with how to secure a highly specialized and diverse global supply chain, particularly as the value of their IP and their dependence upon software increases — along with the sophistication and resources of the attackers. Where methodologies and standards do exist for security, they often are confusing, cumbersome, and incomplete. There are plenty of... » read more

3D In-Memory Compute Making Progress
By Katherine Derbyshire - 17 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Indium compounds are showing great promise for 3D in-memory compute and RF integration, but more work is needed. Researchers continue to make headway into 3D device integration particularly with indium tin oxide (ITO), which is widely used in display manufacturing. Recent work indicates that different compounds of indium oxide doped with tin, gallium, or zinc combinations may boost transisto... » read more

Tradeoffs Between On-Premise And On-Cloud Design
By Ann Mutschler - 16 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down discuss how and why companies are dividing up work on-premise and in the cloud, and what to watch out for, with Philip Steinke, fellow, CAD infrastructure and physical design at AMD; Mahesh Turaga, vice president of business development for cloud at Cadence Design Systems; Richard Ho, vice president hardware engineering at Lightmatter; Cr... » read more

Why It’s So Difficult To Ensure System Safety Over Time
By Brian Bailey - 14 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Safety is emerging as a concern across an increasing number of industries, but standards and methodologies are not in place to ensure electronic systems attain a defined level of safety over time. Much of this falls on the shoulders of the chip industry, which provides the underlying technology, and it raises questions about what more can be done to improve safety. A crude taxonomy recently ... » read more

Processor Tradeoffs For AI Workloads
By Ann Mutschler - 10 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

AI is forcing fundamental shifts in chips used in data centers and in the tools used to design them, but it also is creating gaps between the speed at which that technology advances and the demands from customers. These shifts started gradually, but they have accelerated and multiplied over the past year with the rollout of ChatGPT and other large language models. There is suddenly much more... » read more

Specialization Vs. Generalization In Processors
By Brian Bailey - 10 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 1

Academia has been looking at specialization for many years, but solutions were rejected because general-purpose solutions were advancing fast enough to keep up with most application requirements. That is no longer the case. The introduction and support of the RISC-V processor architecture has attracted a lot of attention, but whether that is the right direction for the majority of modern comput... » read more

MRAM Getting More Attention At Smallest Nodes
By Karen Heyman - 10 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 2

Magneto-resistive RAM (MRAM) appears to be gaining traction at the most advanced nodes, in part because of recent improvements in the memory itself and in part because new markets require solutions for which MRAM may be uniquely qualified. There are still plenty of skeptics when it comes to MRAM, and lots of potential competitors. That has limited MRAM to a niche role over the past couple de... » read more

Navigating the Metrology Maze For GAA FETs
By Gregory Haley - 08 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 1

The chip industry is pushing the boundaries of innovation with the evolution of finFETs to gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet transistors at the 3nm node and beyond, but it also is adding significant new metrology challenges. GAA represents a significant advancement in transistor architecture, where the gate material fully encompasses the nanosheet channel. This approach allows for the vertical... » read more

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