Debate Over Health Of Moore’s Law Continues


Semicon West 2019 was kicked off by the ‘AI Design Forum’ and featured a panel of CEOs that debated if Moore’s Law was still making power, performance and area optimization possible in the same way as it had been. Synopsys chairman and co-CEO Aart de Geus asserted that Moore’s Law is completely alive. “The discussion of Moore's Laws invariably goes back to the ‘65 document, and t... » read more

Memory Options And Tradeoffs


Steven Woo, Rambus fellow and distinguished inventor, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about different memory options, why some are better than others for certain tasks, and what the tradeoffs are between the different memory types and architectures.     Related Articles/Videos Memory Tradeoffs Intensify In AI, Automotive Applications Why choosing memories and archi... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 10


Predicting warpage in packages At the recent IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) in Las Vegas, there were several papers on ways to predict variation and warpage in IC packages. Advanced packages are prone to unwanted warpage during the process flow. The warpage challenges escalate as the packages become thinner. Warpage in turn can impact yields in IC packages. ... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Paris-based Parrot Drones and five other companies were selected by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit and the U.S. Army to adapt off-the-shelf commercial drones for combat applications as part of the Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance program. SRR seeks to develop unmanned aerial vehicles that have a flight time of 30 minutes, a range of three kilometers (nearly two ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A NXP will acquire Marvell's Wi-Fi Connectivity business in an all-cash, asset transaction valued at $1.76 billion. The deal includes the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology portfolios and related assets; the business employs approximately 550 people worldwide. The deal is expected to close by calendar Q1 2020. Tools Cadence unveiled a data center-optimized FPGA-based prototyping system, ... » read more

Adding Order And Structure To Verification


You can't improve what you can't measure, and when it comes to methodologies the notion of measurement becomes more difficult. Add in notions of the skills, capabilities and experience levels of individuals within an organization, which may affect their ability to adopt certain technologies, and it requires considerable attention. This is where concepts such as capability maturity models (CM... » read more

Can The Hardware Supply Chain Remain Secure?


Malware in computers has been a reality since the 1990s, but lately the focus has shifted to hardware. So far, the semiconductor industry has been lucky because well-publicized threats were either limited or unproven. But sooner or later, luck runs out. Last year saw two significant incidents that shook people’s faith in the integrity of hardware security. The first was the Meltdown/Spectr... » read more

System Bits: May 14


Faster U.S. supercomputers on the way The U.S. Department of Energy awarded a contract for more than $600 million to Cray for an exascale supercomputer to be installed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during 2021. Cray will provide its Shasta architecture and Slingshot interconnect for what is dubbed the Frontier supercomputer. Advanced Micro Devices will have a key role in building the... » read more

Chiplet Momentum Builds, Despite Tradeoffs


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

How To Manage DFT For AI Chips


Semiconductor companies are racing to develop AI-specific chips to meet the rapidly growing compute requirements for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. AI chips from companies like Graphcore and Mythic are ASICs based on the novel, massively parallel architectures that maximize data processing capabilities for AI workloads. Others, like Intel, Nvidia, and AMD, are optimizing existing archite... » read more

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