Thinking Outside The Chip


Intel will begin adding 2.5D and 3D packaging into its processors, following the lead set by IBM and AMD in recognizing that new packaging approaches are essential for improving performance and lowering power. This shift won't derail the semiconductor industry's efforts to the reach future process nodes or continually shrink features, but it does add context for other factors that in... » read more

Behind The Intel-Altera Deal


Intel completed its $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera this week, wrapping up what is arguably the semiconductor industry's most important M&A transaction of 2015. Time and numbers will tell exactly how important. There are two big challenges to making this deal work. One involves a big shift in direction away from simply shrinking features to include new architectures and packaging approac... » read more

Reflections On 2015


It is easy to make predictions, but few people can make them with any degree of accuracy. Most of the time, those predictions are forgotten by the end of the year and there is no one to do a tally of who holds more credibility for next year. Not so with SemiEngineering. We like to hold people's feet to the fire, but while the Pants-On-Fire meter may be applicable to politicians, we like to thin... » read more

Placing Bets On Future Technology


Marie Semeria, CEO of Leti, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about where the French research and technology organization is placing its future technology bets and what's behind those decisions. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: It's becoming more difficult and expensive to shrink features, so where do we go next? Semeria: We see several areas that we believe... » read more

Tech Talk: 14nm And Stacked Die


Aashish Malhotra, marketing director for the ASIC Business Unit at GlobalFoundries, talks about 14nm process technology, the IP ecosystem, and why that technology node will be used as a platform for 2.5D and 3D stacked die across a wide range of markets including the Internet of Everything. [youtube vid=ukTRuedB7ZU] » read more

More Choices, Less Certainty


The increasing cost of feature scaling is splintering the chip market, injecting uncertainty into a global supply chain that has been continually fine-tuned for decades. Those with deep enough resources and a clear need for density will likely follow Moore's Law, at least until 7nm. What comes after that will depend on a variety of factors ranging from available lithography—EUV, multi-bea... » read more

Accurate Thermal Analysis, Including Thermal Coupling Of On-Chip Hot Interconnect


Driven by rapid advancement in mobile/server computing and automotive/communications, SoCs are experiencing a fast pace of functional integration along with technology scaling. Advanced low power techniques are widely used, while meeting higher performance requirements using a variety of packaging technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT) is further opening up new applications with connected d... » read more

Security In 2.5D


The long-anticipated move to 2.5D and fan-outs is raising some familiar questions about security. Will multiple chips combined in an advanced package be as secure as SoCs where everything is integrated on the same die? The answer isn't a simple yes or no. Put in perspective, all chips are vulnerable to [getkc id="253" kc_name="side channel attacks"], hacking of memory—a risk that increases... » read more

Is The 2.5D Supply Chain Ready?


A handful of big semiconductor companies began taking the wraps off 2.5D and fan-out packaging plans in the past couple of weeks, setting the stage for the first major shift away from Moore's Law in 50 years. Those moves coincide with reports of commercial [getkc id="82" kc_name="2.5D"] chips from chip assemblers and foundries that are now under development. There have been indications for... » read more

Is HW Or SW Running the Show?


In the past, hardware was designed and then passed over to the software team for them to add their contribution to the product. This worked when the amount of software content was small and the practice did not significantly contribute to product delays. Over time, the software content grew and today it is generally accepted that software accounts for more product expense than hardware, takes l... » read more

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