More Than Moore


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the value of feature shrinks and what comes next with Steve Eplett, design technology and automation manager at [getentity id="22664" e_name="Open-Silicon"]; Patrick Soheili, vice president and general manager of IP Solutions at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Brandon Wang, engineering group director at [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadenc... » read more

How Reliable Is Your IP?


Almost everyone who has bought a new smartphone, car, home electronics device or appliance either has experienced technical glitches that require a replacement or repair, or they know someone who has experienced these problems. The good news is that only a very small fraction of the electronic glitches or failures can be contributed to hardware design. Most of it is due to manufacturing vari... » read more

Making Chips Run Faster


For all the talk about low power, the real focus of most chipmakers is still performance. The reality is that OEMs might be willing to sacrifice increasing performance for longer battery life, but they will rarely lower performance to reach that goal. This is more obvious for some applications than others. A machine monitor probably isn’t the place where performance will make much of a dif... » read more

Advances In Power Management For Physical IP In 28nm And FinFET Process Nodes


Engineering techniques to reduce power consumption by lowering the supply voltage and slowing the clock speed have reached practical limits of the semiconductor technologies. Newer solutions, which not only reduce power but also actively manage the power during the course of the SoC (system on chip) activity, are emerging. This article describes these innovations from the foundation intellectua... » read more

The Changing IP Ecosystem


Is a larger [getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"] company better suited to deliver what users need – from hardware to software to PDKs and reference designs – with larger and more diverse teams to draw upon, as well as deep foundry relationships? Or does it pay to small, quick and nimble? The answer to that question appears to be playing out in real time. As design complexity has increased, so ha... » read more

Executive Insight: Jack Harding


SE: What’s worrying you these days? Harding: One thing that bothers me is the cost of chip development on a per-chip basis. We seduce ourselves into thinking everything is wonderful because the cost per transistor is dropping in chunks. Gate costs are going down at every node. If you look at the secular trend, we’ve done a pretty good job putting a lot of stuff in a small space. In my bu... » read more

Improving 2.5D Components


A lot of attention is being focused on improving designs at established, well-tested nodes where processes are mature, yields are high, and costs are under control. So what does this mean to stacking die? For 2.5D architectures, plenty. For 3D, probably not much. Here’s why: The advantage of 2.5D is that it can utilize dies created at whatever node makes sense. While the initial discuss... » read more

Power Reduction Techniques


As 16nm and 14nm finFET process nodes come into production toward the end of this year, the performance (up to 30% vs. 28nm planar CMOS), power (~30%) and area (up to ~50%) benefits have been well documented. The same can be said for the 28nm FD-SOI process as it gains more traction in the marketplace touting similar performance and power improvements as those for FinFET when compared against i... » read more

IP Integration Challenges Rising


It’s not just [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"] that is putting a crimp in sub-28nm designs. As more functions, features, transistors and software are added onto chips, the pressure to get chips out the door has forced chipmakers to lean more heavily on third-party IP providers. Results, as you might expect, have been mixed. The number of blocks has mushroomed, creating its own web of ... » read more

28nm FinFETs?


One star of the upcoming 14/16nm process node is the introduction of the finFET, a fundamentally new transistor that overcomes many of the limitations associated with planar transistors. While these devices are more complex to construct—and the physical extraction processes associated with them is more complex due to an increased number of resistances and capacitances—they are seen as a tra... » read more

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