End Of Mixed Signal Engineering?


EDA companies are stepping back after years of trying to force engineers to combine analog and digital disciplines. Rather than emphasizing [getkc id="38" kc_name="mixed signal"] as a single expertise, they are building bridges and translation mechanisms between the two worlds. The moves cap more than a decade of trying to find optimal ways to pack [getkc id="37" kc_name="analog"] and digita... » read more

High-Bandwidth Memory


High-bandwidth memory (HBM) is a JEDEC-defined standard, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology that uses through-silicon vias (TSVs) to interconnect stacked DRAM die. In its first implementation, it is being integrated with a system-on-chip (SoC) logic die using 2.5D silicon interposer technology. This white paper explains HBM’s value proposition, and how these five companies make... » read more

2.5D Becomes A Reality


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss 2.5D and advanced packaging with Max Min, senior technical manager at [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung"]; Rob Aitken, an [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"] fellow; John Shin, vice president at [getentity id="22903" e_name="Marvell"]; Bill Isaacson, director of ASIC marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Frank Ferro, senior di... » read more

10nm Versus 7nm


The silicon foundry business is heating up, as vendors continue to ramp their 16nm/14nm finFET processes. At the same time, they are racing each other to ship the next technologies on the roadmap—10nm and 7nm. But the landscape is complicated, with each vendor taking a different strategy. [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung"], for one, plans to ship its 10nm [getkc id="185" kc_name="fi... » read more

Foundries Expand Their Scope


By Ed Sperling & Mark LaPedus Major foundries are stepping up their offerings across a wide swath of technology nodes, specialty processes and advanced packaging—a recognition that end markets are fragmenting and that the path forward includes a mix of new and established processes. As the smart phone market flattens, there is no single "next big thing" to drive volume at the most ... » read more

Power Management Heats Up


Power management has been talked about a lot recently, especially when it comes to mobile devices. But power is only a part of the issue—and perhaps not even the most important part. Heat is the ultimate limiter. If you cannot comfortably place the device on your face or wrist, then you will not have a successful product. Controlling heat, at the micro and macro levels, is an important asp... » read more

2.5D Becomes A Reality


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss 2.5D and advanced packaging with Max Min, senior technical manager at [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung"]; Rob Aitken, an [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"] fellow; John Shin, vice president at [getentity id="22903" e_name="Marvell"]; Bill Isaacson, director of ASIC marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Frank Ferro, senior di... » read more

Silexica: Multicore Software Automation


Multicore programming has a long and troubled history, and it has become much worse as the computing world moves increasingly toward heterogeneous multicore architectures. While it's easy enough to map out the hardware's power/performance characteristics, it is much harder to make the software take advantage of the appropriate cores. Enter Silexa, which began as a research project in 2008 at... » read more

How Many Cores? (Part 2)


New chip architectures and new packaging options—including fan-outs and 2.5D—are changing basic design considerations for how many cores are needed, what they are used for, and how to solve some increasingly troublesome bottlenecks. As reported in part one, just adding more cores doesn't necessarily improve performance, and adding the wrong size or kinds of cores wastes power. That has s... » read more

Timing Is Everything


It's easy to look back on companies or products that missed the market because they were too early. Remember the Eo? The brick-like personal digital assistant that AT&T introduced in 1993 had an antenna that hinted at 4G connectivity. Unfortunately, there was no 4G available at the time, so it was just an extra wire. (Check out the video of the tablet version here.) The EO 440 Personal... » read more

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