category: Let’s Talk PVT Monitoring

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Verification Pilgrims Show A Historical Case For DFT
By Lee Vick - 27 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

The Mayflower Steps, where the Pilgrims are believed to have embarked on their journey to America, are located in the beautiful Barbican area of Plymouth, a small town in the southwest of England. As the lone American working for Moortec, a British company based in Plymouth, I stood and stared at them this past September. Separated by a few yards of distance but 399 years of history I found my... » read more

Finding Hotspots In AI Chips
By Stephen Crosher - 14 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Things are getting far more complicated as we move down to 7nm & 5nm but the tolerances of some of the physical effects that we have been measuring in the past are much tighter than they were at the older nodes. How do we track all that? What we see is that as we descend through the advanced nodes, say from 16nm down to 12nm, 7nm and more recently 5nm, we see that gate density starts to ... » read more

How To Reduce Thermal Guard-Banding
By Ramsay Allen - 14 Feb, 2019 - Comments: 0

Accuracy in temperature sensors can have a big impact in designs from 40nm down to 7nm and beyond, reducing the amount of guard-banding that is required, which in turn can lower the power and extend the life and reliability of components. But at these process geometries, not all sensors measure temperature equally. Thermal guard-banding is a very important consideration for design teams, and... » read more

5 Reasons Why In-Chip Monitoring Is Here To Stay
By Ramsay Allen - 13 Sep, 2018 - Comments: 0

When the first car rolled off his production line in 1913, Henry Ford would have already envisioned just how prolific the automobile would become. However, would he have foreseen the extent to which monitors and sensors would become critical to the modern internal combustion engine? The requirement for energy efficiency, power performance and reliability in high volume manufactured vehicles ... » read more

Explaining Adaptive Voltage Scaling And Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling
By Ramsay Allen - 17 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. What exactly do we mean by Adaptive Voltage Scaling versus Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling? Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS) involves the reduction of power by changing the operating conditions within an ASIC in a closed loop. Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS), on the other hand, is a power management technique where the voltage is increased ... » read more

Process Detection & Variability
By Ramsay Allen - 14 Jun, 2018 - Comments: 0

A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. What do we mean by process variation? Process variation is a complex subject which covers a range of effects, but broadly we can consider that the effects are caused by imperfections in the manufacturing process. Examples are implant variations, mask misalignments, and optical variations. These all add up to give statistical variation on the ideal o... » read more

Supply Monitoring On 28nm & FinFET: The Challenges Posed
By Ramsay Allen - 12 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 0

A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. What are the issues with supplies on advanced nodes? The supplies have been coming down, quicker than the threshold voltages which has led to less supply margin. In addition to this, the interconnects are becoming thinner and closer together, which is pushing up resistance and also capacitance. What is the effect of these issues? In short, it... » read more

Thermal Issues And Modern SoCs: How Hot Is Hot?
By Ramsay Allen - 16 Mar, 2018 - Comments: 0

A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. What are the thermal issues of modern SoCs? Gate density has been increasing with each node and that pushes up power per unit area, and I think that has become an even bigger issue with FinFET processes where the channels are more thermally isolated than the planar processes before them. In the last few planar nodes, leakage was an issue which led ... » read more

Understanding Your Chip’s Age
By Ramsay Allen - 08 Feb, 2018 - Comments: 1

A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. Why is understanding your chip's age important? Semiconductor devices age over time, we all know that, but what is often not well understood are the mechanisms for aging or the limits that will cause a chip to fail. In addition, there is bound to be a requirement for a minimum lifetime of a device which will depend on application but could be two or... » read more

Why Pinpoint Accuracy Is Important When Monitoring Conditions On Chip
By Ramsay Allen - 11 Jan, 2018 - Comments: 0

A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. Why is there an increasing requirement for monitoring on chip? Since the beginning of the semiconductor industry, we have relied on a doubling of transistor count per unit area every 18 months as a way to increase performance and functionality of devices. Since 28nm, this has broken. As such, designers now need to find new ways to continue increasing... » read more

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