Experts At The Table: Does 20nm Break System-Level Design?


By Ann Steffora Mutschler System-Level Design sat down to discuss design at 20nm with Drew Wingard, chief technology officer at Sonics; Kelvin Low, deputy director of product marketing at GlobalFoundries, Frank Schirrmeister, group director of product marketing for system development in the system and software realization group at Cadence; and Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at Atr... » read more

Leveraging The Past


By Ann Steffora Mutschler It’s easy to forget that not every design today is targeted at 20nm, given the amount of focus put on the bleeding edge of technology. But in fact a large number of designs utilize the stability and reliability of older manufacturing nodes, as well as lower mask costs, by incorporating new design and verification techniques, with 2.5D designs being a prime example. ... » read more

Fabless-Foundry Model Under Stress


By Mark LaPedus The semiconductor roadmap was once a smooth and straightforward path, but chipmakers face a bumpy and challenging ride as they migrate to the 20nm node and beyond. Among the challenges seen on the horizon are the advent of 3D stacking, 450mm fabs, new transistor architectures, multi-patterning, and the questionable availability of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. ... » read more

Bucket Lists


At 130nm, the introduction of copper interconnects, 300mm wafers and low-k dielectrics left the entire supply chain breathless. There had never been as many changes at a single process node in the history of semiconductors. At 28nm, the number of changes will pale compared to what’s necessary at 20nm, and that will pale to what’s required at 14nm. But unlike 130nm, when most of those cha... » read more

What’s ST’s FD-SOI Technology All About?


As I blogged here on SemiMD last week, STMicroelectronics has announced that to supplement in-house production at their fab in Crolles, the company has tapped GlobalFoundries for high-volume production of 28nm then 20nm FD-SOI mobile devices.  ST will also open access to its FD-SOI technology to GlobalFoundries’ other customers.  High-volume manufacturing will kick off with ST-Ericsson’s ... » read more

GloFo to Fab 28/20nm FD-SOI for ST; ST Tech Open to GF Customers


Two big pieces of news have recently been announced by STMicroelectronics: to supplement in-house production at Crolles, the company has tapped GlobalFoundries for high-volume production of 28nm then 20nm FD-SOI mobile devices; ST will open access to its FD-SOI technology to GlobalFoundries’ other customers. The high-volume manufacturing will kick off with ST-Ericsson’s ARM-based 2... » read more

New Reliability Issues


By Arvind Shanmugavel Reliability of ICs is a topic of growing concern with every technology node migration. With the onset of the 20nm process node from different foundries, reliability verification has taken center stage in design kits—and for good reason. Reliability margins have continued to decrease and have reached an inflection point at the 20nm node. The design and EDA communities ha... » read more

Chenming Hu: SOI Can Empower New Transistors to 10nm and beyond


The following is a special guest post by Dr. Chenming Hu, TSMC Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley. He and his team published seminal papers on FinFETs (1999) and UTB-SOI (2000). This post first appeared as part of the Advanced Substrate News special edition on FD-SOI industrialization.  ~~ The good, old MOSFET is nearing its limits. Scaling issues and dopant-induced variations ... » read more

Soitec’s Wafer Roadmap for Fully Depleted Planar and 3D/FinFET


The following is a special guest post by Steve Longoria, Senior VP of Worldwide Business Development at Soitec.  It first appeared as part of the Advanced Substrate News special edition on FD-SOI industrialization. ~~ Today’s semiconductor industry is moving through several challenging transitions that are creating a significant opportunity for Soitec to bring incremental value to th... » read more

ST-Ericsson 28nm FD-SOI smartphone SOC, Q3 tape-out (interview)


ASN recently had a chance to talk to ST-Ericsson’s Chief Chip Architect Louis Tannyeres  about the move to 28nm FD-SOI for smartphones and tablet SOCs.  Take-away message:  FD-SOI solves – with less process complexity – scaling, leakage and variability issues to further shrink CMOS technology beyond 28nm. Here's what he said. ~~ [caption id="attachment_441" align="alignleft" wi... » read more

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