Signal Integrity Issues


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss signal integrity with Rob Aitken, research fellow at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; PV Srinivas, senior director of engineering for the Place & Route Division of [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"]; and Bernard Murphy, chief technology officer at [getentity id="22026" e_name="Atrenta"]. What follows are excerpts of that conver... » read more

What Happened To GaN And SiC?


About five years ago, some chipmakers claimed that traditional silicon-based power MOSFETs had hit the wall, prompting the need for a new power transistor technology. At the time, some thought that two wide-bandgap technologies—gallium nitride (GaN) on silicon and silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs—would displace the ubiquitous power MOSFET. In addition, GaN and SiC were supposed to pose a t... » read more

Back To The Future


The push to the next process node typically has meant that designs get simpler at existing and older nodes because the process technology is more mature and there have been so many chips developed at those nodes—many billions of them—that every possible corner case has been encountered hundreds, if not thousands, of times. That all makes sense in theory, but several key things have chang... » read more

New Market Expectations For 2015


This year more than 26 people provided predictions for 2015. Most of these came from the EDA industry, so the results may be rather biased. However, ecosystems are coming closer together in many parts of the semiconductor food chain, meaning that the EDA companies often can see what is happening in dependent industries and in the system design houses. Thus their predictions may have already res... » read more

First Look: 10nm


As the semiconductor industry begins grappling with mass production at 14/16nm process nodes, work is already underway at 10nm. Tools are qualified, IP is characterized, and the first test chips are being produced. It's still too early for production, of course—perhaps three years too early—but there is enough information being collected to draw at least some impressions about just how toug... » read more

Automotive System Design Challenges


The automotive semiconductor market did exceptionally well last year. IHS reported strong vehicle production growth and increased semiconductor content in 2014, and that trend is likely to continue with semiconductor revenue for the automotive segment to reach $31 billion this year, up from $29 billion last year. The market research company affirmed the fastest growing segments for automoti... » read more

Tools And Flows In 2015


This year more than 26 people provided predictions for 2015. Most of these came from the EDA industry, so the results may be rather biased. However, ecosystems are coming closer together in many parts of the semiconductor food chain, meaning that the EDA companies often can see what is happening in dependent industries and in the system design houses. Thus their predictions may have already res... » read more

Darker Silicon


For the last several decades, integrated circuit manufacturers have focused their efforts on [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"], increasing transistor density at constant cost. For much of that time, Dennard’s Law also held: As the dimensions of a device go down, so does power consumption. Smaller transistors ran faster, used less power, and cost less. As most readers already know, howe... » read more

New Challenges For Wearables


The earliest recorded mention of a wristwatch dates back to the late 1500s, but it really began gaining adherents in Great Britain’s Boer War campaign as a way of synchronizing military actions beyond the line of sight. Strapping a pocket watch to a horse or a camel simply didn’t work, and pulling it out of a jacket pocket was not only inconvenient, it was dangerous. Advertised as a “c... » read more

Next Channel Materials?


Chipmakers are making a giant leap from planar transistors to [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFETs"]. Initially, [getentity id="22846" e_name="Intel"] moved into finFET production at 22nm and is now ramping up its second-generation finFETs at 14nm. And the other foundries will enter the finFET fray at 16nm/14nm. So what’s next? Chipmakers will likely extend the finFET architecture to both 10nm... » read more

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