Setting Standards For The Chip Industry

By Karen Heyman - 07 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 2

For all the advances in semiconductor design, and the astonishing scales on which the industry now works, when it comes to standards committee meetings, not much has changed. Advice from a 91-year-old retired engineer can sound surprisingly like advice from those active today. Standards were then, and continue to be, a mix of technical compromises and corporate politics, as well as passionate a... » read more

Need To Share Data Widens In IC Manufacturing

By Ed Sperling - 31 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss issues in smart manufacturing of chips, including data management and grounding, chiplets, and standards, with Mujtaba Hamid, general manager for product management for secure cloud environments at Microsoft; Vijaykishan Narayanan, vice president and general manager of India engineering and operations at proteanTecs; KT Moore,... » read more

Automotive Complexity, Supply Chain Strength Demands Tech Collaboration

By Ann Mutschler - 30 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 1

The automotive supply chain is becoming more complex and collaborative, changing longstanding relationships between automakers and their suppliers in ways that would have seemed unimaginable even a couple of years ago. Rather than just developing parts for a tightly defined specification, suppliers are taking an increasingly active role in determining how various technologies are combined, w... » read more

New Concepts Required For Security Verification

By Brian Bailey - 28 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Verification for security requires new practices in both the development and verification flows, but tools and methodologies to enable this are rudimentary today. Flows are becoming more complex, especially when they span multiple development groups. Security is special in that it is pervasive throughout the development process, requiring both positive and negative verification. Positive ver... » read more

Optimizing IC Designs For Real-World Use Cases

By Brian Bailey - 24 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor systems are becoming more focused on power, performance, and area for the primary scenarios they are likely to see in real-world applications, but increasingly at the expense of secondary tasks. This is happening at all levels of abstraction and all stages of the design flow. At the highest level, processors are being optimized to run a given set of software. RISC-V is one of t... » read more

AI, Rising Chip Complexity Complicate Prototyping

By Karen Heyman - 24 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Prototyping, an essential technology for designing complex chips in tight market windows, is becoming significantly more challenging for the growing number of designs that include AI/ML. Prototyping remains one of the foundational pillars of the whole shift left movement, allowing software to be developed and tested before actual silicon is available. That, in turn, enables multiple teams t... » read more

Preparing For Commercial Chiplets

By Ed Sperling - 24 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the path to commercialization of chiplets with Saif Alam, vice president of engineering at Movellus; Tony Mastroianni, advanced packaging solutions director at Siemens Digital Industries Software; Mark Kuemerle, vice president of technology at Marvell; and Craig Bishop, CTO at Deca Technologies. What follows are excerpts of tha... » read more

Using Data More Effectively In Chip Manufacturing

By Ed Sperling - 23 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss smart manufacturing and how tools and AI can enable it for semiconductors, with Mujtaba Hamid, general manager for product management for secure cloud environments at Microsoft; Vijaykishan Narayanan, vice president and general manager of India engineering and operations at proteanTecs; KT Moore, vice president of corporate ma... » read more

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

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer

New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency

Hot Chips 24: Large language models ratchet up pressure for sustainable computing and heterogeneous integration; data management becomes key differentiator.