See The Internet Of Things…In 3D


No, you don’t need 3D glasses to experience two of the hottest emerging technology trends in electronics — just take advantage of the longest running conference series on the topic of 3-D integrated circuits. Now in its 11th year, the 3D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging conference will take place in San Francisco next week. The event will feature two pre-conference ... » read more

Signal And Power Integrity Cross Paths


Signal integrity and power integrity historically have been relatively independent issues, and engineers with expertise in one area generally operate independently of the other. But as more power domains are added to conserve energy and allow more features, as voltages are reduced to save battery life, and as dynamic power becomes more of a concern at advanced nodes, these worlds are suddenly m... » read more

The Internet Of Cores


Ever since the birth of the third-party [getkc id="43" comment="IP"] market, there has been a desire for plug-and-play compatibility between cores. Part of the value proposition of reuse is that a block has been used before, and has been verified and validated by having been implemented in silicon. By re-using the core, many of these tasks no longer land on the [getkc id="81" kc_name="SoC"] dev... » read more

Future Directions Unknown


The semiconductor industry has been on cruise control when it comes to shrinking features, but as process technology progresses to 10nm and 7nm there will be some significant changes. For one thing, the cost per new design will continue to rise, which means only the largest companies with the biggest market opportunity will be able to invest at the leading-edge nodes. Chips for mobile phones... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


IP Cadence rolled out a portfolio of stacked die memory verification IP to support Wide I/O-2, Hybrid Memory Cube, high-bandwidth memory, and DDR4-3DS. Included are direct memory access for read, write, save, preload and comparison of memory contents, assertions, error configurability, and a built-in address manager. ARM rolled out additions to its enterprise-class SoC interconnects for qua... » read more

Balancing The Cost Of Test


As semiconductor devices became larger and more complex, the cost of [getkc id="174" kc_name="test"] increased. Testers were large pieces of capital equipment designed to execute functional vectors at-speed and the technology being used had to keep up with increasing demands placed on them. Because of this, the cost of test did not decrease in the way that other high-tech equipment did. Around ... » read more

Why Is My Device Better Than Yours?


Differentiation is becoming a big problem in the semiconductor industry with far-reaching implications that extend well beyond just chips. The debate over the future of [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] is well known, but it's just one element in a growing list that will make it much harder for chip companies, IP vendors and even software developers to stand out from the pack. And withou... » read more

Litho Options Sparse After 10nm


Leading-edge foundries are ramping up their 16nm/14nm logic processes, with 10nm and 7nm in R&D. Barring a major breakthrough in [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"], chipmakers will use 193nm immersion and multiple patterning for both 16nm/14nm and 10nm. So now, chipmakers are focusing on the lithography options for 7nm. As before, the options include the usual suspects—[gettech id="... » read more

One-On-One: Mike Muller


SE: What happens with memory, where access is more localized? Muller: Hybrid memory cube is one approach. HBM is another. ARM is chairing an IEEE standards group for a next-gen memory interface to make sure we build memories that fit mobile as well as networking and classic servers. Whereas in the past, memories were driven from the performance, we need to make the power scales with the band... » read more

Memory Directions Uncertain


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a panel of experts to find out what is happening in world of memories. Taking part in the discussion are [getperson id="11073" comment="Charlie Cheng"], chief executive officer at [getentity id="22135" e_name="Kilopass Technology"]; Navraj Nandra, senior director of marketing for Analog/Mixed signal IP, embedded memories and logic libraries at [getentity ... » read more

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