Advanced Process Control

By Ed Sperling - 20 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 0

David Fried, vice president of computational products at Lam Research, looks at shrinking tolerances at advanced processes, how that affects variation in semiconductor manufacturing, and what can be done to achieve the benefits of scaling without moving to new transistor architectures. » read more

Sidestepping Moore’s Law

By Mark LaPedus - 20 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 2

Calvin Cheung, vice president of engineering at ASE, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about advanced packaging, the challenges involved with the technology, and the implications for Moore’s Law. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What are some of the big issues with IC packaging today? Cheung: Moore’s Law is slowing down, but transistor scaling will co... » read more

Test Moving Forward And Backward

By Ed Sperling - 11 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 0

Test, once considered an important but rather mundane way of separating good chips from the not-so-good and the total rejects, is taking on a whole new life. After decades of largely living in the shadows behind design and advancements in materials and lithography, test has quietly shifted into a much more critical and more public role. But it has taken several rather significant shifts acro... » read more

Meltdown, Spectre And Foreshadow

By Ed Sperling - 03 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 0

Ben Levine, senior director of product management for Rambus’ Security Division, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about hardware-specific attacks, why they are so dangerous, and how they work. » read more

CEO Outlook: It Gets Much Harder From Here

By Ed Sperling - 03 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss what's changing across the semiconductor industry with Wally Rhines, CEO emeritus at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jack Harding, president and CEO of eSilicon; John Kibarian, president and CEO of PDF Solutions; and John Chong, vice president of product and business development for Kionix. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which was held in... » read more

Chiplet Momentum Builds, Despite Tradeoffs

By Brian Bailey - 13 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Chip design is a series of tradeoffs. Some are technical, others are related to cost, competitive features or legal restrictions. But with the nascent 'chiplet' market, many of the established balance points are significantly altered, depending on market segments and ecosystem readiness. Chiplets provide an alternative mechanism for integrating intellectual property (IP) blocks into a semico... » read more

The Growing Uncertainty Of Sign-Off At 7/5nm

By Ann Mutschler - 09 May, 2019 - Comments: 3

Having enough confidence in designs to sign off prior to manufacturing is becoming far more difficult at 7/5nm. It is taking longer due to increasing transistor density, thinner gate oxides, and many more power-related operations that can disrupt signal integrity and impact reliability. For many years, designers have performed design rule checks as part of physical verification of the desi... » read more

Gaps Emerge In Automotive Test

By Ed Sperling - 07 May, 2019 - Comments: 1

Demands by automakers for zero defects over 18 years are colliding with real-world limitations of testing complex circuitry and interactions, and they are exposing a fundamental disconnect between mechanical and electronic expectations that could be very expensive to fix. This is especially apparent at leading-edge nodes, where much of the logic is being developed for AI systems and image se... » read more

Making AI More Dependable

By Ed Sperling - 07 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Ira Leventhal, vice president of Advantest’s new concept product initiative, looks at why AI has taken so long to get going, what role it will play in improving the reliability of all chips, and how to use AI to improve the reliability of AI chips themselves. » read more

Automotive System Design

By Ed Sperling - 06 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Burkhard Huhnke, vice president of automotive at Synopsys, looks at how to build and update chips in increasingly sophisticated vehicles, where the problem spots are, and what comes next. » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

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NAND Flash Targets 1,000 Layers

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Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

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New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency

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