SiC Growth For EVs Is Stressing Manufacturing


The electrification of vehicles is fueling demand for silicon carbide power ICs, but it also is creating challenges in finding and identifying defects in those chips. Coinciding with this is a growing awareness about just how immature SiC technology is and how much work still needs to be done — and how quickly that has to happen. Automakers are pushing heavily into electric vehicles, and t... » read more

Using Generative AI To Connect Lab To Fab Test


Executive Insight: Thomas Benjamin, CTO at National Instruments, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss a new way of looking at test, using data as a starting point and generative AI as a bridge between different capabilities. SE: What are the big changes you're seeing and how is that affecting movement of critical data from the lab to the fab? Benjamin: If you walk into any m... » read more

Chiplets: Deep Dive Into Designing, Manufacturing, And Testing


Chiplets are a disruptive technology. They change the way chips are designed, manufactured, tested, packaged, as well as the underlying business relationships and fundamentals. But they also open the door to vast new opportunities for existing chipmakers and startups to create highly customized components and systems for specific use cases and market segments. This LEGO-like approach sounds ... » read more

AI Transformer Models Enable Machine Vision Object Detection


The object detection required for machine vision applications such as autonomous driving, smart manufacturing, and surveillance applications depends on AI modeling. The goal now is to improve the models and simplify their development. Over the years, many AI models have been introduced, including YOLO, Faster R-CNN, Mask R-CNN, RetinaNet, and others, to detect images or video signals, interp... » read more

Creating IP In The Shadow Of ISO 26262


On many levels, designing IP for the automotive sector is similar to targeting aerospace or medical devices — human lives are at risk if something goes wrong, and the list of regulations is significant. In practice, it can turn an interesting chip design project into a complex and often frustrating checklist exercise. In the case of ISO 26262, that includes a 12-part standard for automotiv... » read more

Multiple Hurdles In The Race To 6G


The rollout of 6G will open the door to significant changes and possibilities, but whether this technology lives up to the hype will require massive collaborative efforts, huge investments in infrastructure, and solving some problems for which there are no precedents. Multiple companies are already working on 6G technology, aiming for a maximum download speed of one terabit per second (Tb/s)... » read more

Startup Funding: July 2023


Investors pumped more than $2.8 billion into 123 companies July. It was a particularly strong month for photonics companies, with a photonic integrated circuit foundry raising more than $100 million. Startups this month also are using photonic technology in innovative ways. This includes an all-optical RISC processor, biomarker identification, faster fully homomorphic encryption, and more AI... » read more

Battling Over Shrinking Physical Margin In Chips


Smaller process nodes, coupled with a continual quest to add more features into designs, are forcing chipmakers and systems companies to choose which design and manufacturing groups have access to a shrinking pool of technology margin. In the past margin largely was split between the foundries, which imposed highly restrictive design rules (RDRs) to compensate for uncertainties in new proces... » read more

Shift Left, Extend Right, Stretch Sideways


The EDA industry has been talking about shift left for a few years, but development flows are now being stretched in two additional ways, extending right to include silicon lifecycle management, and sideways to include safety and security. In addition, safety and security join verification and power as being vertical concerns, and we are increasingly seeing interlinking within those concerns. ... » read more

The Good And Bad Of Chip Design On Cloud


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about how the shift toward chip design on cloud has sped up, whether the benefits of cloud are realized in chip design, and some of the most pressing challenges to chip design on cloud today, with Philip Steinke, fellow, CAD infrastructure and physical design at AMD; Mahesh Turaga, vice president of business development for cloud at Cadence Design Syst... » read more

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