The Economics Of Moore’s Law

By Imec - 18 Feb, 2016 - Comments: 0

By Marc Heyns I’m very optimistic about the continuation of Moore’s Law. But in saying that, I’m speaking about Moore’s Law purely as an economic law. I believe we’ll be able to offer increasing amounts of functionality at lower and lower costs. And technological innovations as well as advances in design and application will be crucial in realizing this. But I don’t believe a ne... » read more

The Internet Of Power Also Benefits From Moore’s Law

By Imec - 21 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 0

By Jef Poortmans It may sound strange, but striving to achieve smaller dimensions with Moore’s Law is an important enabler for producing increasingly better solar cells, with a more elaborate technology toolbox (including ALD, epitaxy, etc.) Improved process steps are constantly being developed to achieve these small transistor dimensions (for growing material layers or to etch away str... » read more

Betting On Wright’s Law

By Imec - 17 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

By Paul Heremans Most people know Moore’s Law as "the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years." That interpretation was the consequence of economic considerations. Moore predicted that "the number of transistors on a chip will rise exponentially if the surface area stays the same, because that way the cost per unit of computing power for integrated transistors will decrease... » read more

Design Techniques Are Helping To Keep Moore’s Law Alive Longer

By Imec - 22 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 0

By Francky Catthoor Moore's Law means that electronic products can constantly be produced more cheaply, faster and more economically. Down to 45nm, this was due mainly to the technology that made it possible to reduce the size of transistors. Now things are becoming more difficult. But even if we are not able to achieve these gains through the further scaling of transistors as the result ... » read more

We Must Teach Chips To Feel Pain

By Imec - 17 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

By Guido Groeseneken When I was a doctorate student in the 1980s there was lots of wild speculation about Moore’s Law: give it another 10 years and transistors will stop getting smaller, they were saying back then. But in the end, the creativity of engineers turned out to be greater than the pessimism of the forecasters. Yet today I believe that we are close to the end of Moore’s Law.... » read more

Reticle Inspection And Metrology

By Zain Saidin - 21 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Pattern defects and contamination on a reticle can cause yield issues in every die of every wafer printed. We take it for granted today, but it started out with people looking through a microscope and manually scrolling back and forth looking for defects on photomasks that originally were hand cut, and later on made by machines. Fast forward to the present and we're able to find the equivale... » read more

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

NAND Flash Targets 1,000 Layers

New techniques go beyond improved deposition and etching, but challenges stack up, too.

by Bryon Moyer

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

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.