Debugging Embedded Applications


Debugging embedded designs is becoming increasingly difficult as the number of observed and possible interactions between hardware and software continue to grow, and as more features are crammed into chips, packages, and systems. But there also appear to be some advances on this front, involving a mix of techniques, including hardware trace, scan chain-based debug, along with better simulation ... » read more

Enablers And Barriers For Connecting Diverse Data


More data is being collected at every step of the manufacturing process, raising the possibility of combining data in new ways to solve engineering problems. But this is far from simple, and combining results is not always possible. The semiconductor industry’s thirst for data has created oceans of it from the manufacturing process. In addition, semiconductor designs large and small now ha... » read more

More Errors, More Correction in Memories


As memory bit cells of any type become smaller, bit error rates increase due to lower margins and process variation. This can be dealt with using error correction to account for and correct bit errors, but as more sophisticated error-correction codes (ECC) are used, it requires more silicon area, which in turn drives up the cost. Given this trend, the looming question is whether the cost of ... » read more

Coping With Parallel Test Site-to-Site Variation


Testing multiple devices in parallel using the same ATE results in reduced test time and lower costs, but it requires engineering finesse to make it so. Minimizing test measurement variation for each device under test (DUT) is a multi-physics problem, and it's one that is becoming more essential to resolve at each new process node and in multi-chip packages. It requires synchronization of el... » read more

Complex Chips Make Security More Difficult


Semiconductor supply chain management is becoming more complex with many more moving parts as chips become increasingly disaggregated, making it difficult to ensure where parts originated and whether they have been compromised before they are added into advanced chips or packages. In the past, supply chain concerns largely focused primarily on counterfeit parts or gray-market substitutions u... » read more

Improving Medical Image Processing With AI


Machine learning is being integrated with medical image processing, one of the most useful technologies for medical diagnosis and surgery, greatly expanding the amount of useful information that can be gleaned from scan or MRI. For the most part, ML is being used to augment manual processes that medical personnel use today. While the goal is to automate many of these functions, it's not clea... » read more

Easier And Faster Ways To Train AI


Training an AI model takes an extraordinary amount of effort and data. Leveraging existing training can save time and money, accelerating the release of new products that use the model. But there are a few ways this can be done, most notably through transfer and incremental learning, and each of them has its applications and tradeoffs. Transfer learning and incremental learning both take pre... » read more

Startup Funding: October 2021


Semiconductor manufacturing and packaging companies caught the attention of investors last month, with funding going to a middle-end-of-line foundry, flexible electronics manufacturer, and fab management software. Two Israeli startups are approaching AI accelerators in very different ways, while battery startups propose a variety of new chemistries in the search for the ideal electric vehicle b... » read more

Reviving The IPO Route For IP Companies


K. Charles Janac, chairman and CEO of Arteris IP, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the company's recent decision to go public, including the benefits and risks of operating as a public IP company. SE: The rule of thumb used to be $20 million in revenue was needed for an IP company to do an IPO at the turn of the Millennium, and then it increased to $40 million about a de... » read more

What’s Missing For Designing Chips At The System Level


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about design challenges in advanced packages and nodes with John Lee, vice president and general manager for semiconductors at Ansys; Shankar Krishnamoorthy, general manager of Synopsys' Design Group; Simon Burke, distinguished engineer at Xilinx; and Andrew Kahng, professor of CSE and ECE at UC San Diego. This discussion was held at the Ansys IDEAS co... » read more

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