Next-Gen SerDes Roadmap


An explosion in data is causing a series of successive bottlenecks in the data center. Priyank Shukla, product marketing manager for high-speed SerDes IP at Synopsys, digs into the performance roadmap for moving data within server racks and between different racks, where the bottlenecks are today, and how they will be addressed in the future. Related SerDes Knowledge Center Top stories... » read more

Testing Analog Circuits Becoming More Difficult


Foundries and packaging houses are wrestling how to control heat in the testing phase, particularly as devices continue to shrink and as thermally sensitive analog circuits are added into SoCs and advanced packages to support everything from RF to AI. The overriding problem is that heat can damage chips or devices under test. That's certainly true for digital chips developed at advanced node... » read more

Chasing Test Escapes In IC Manufacturing


The number of bad chips that slip through testing and end up in the field can be significantly reduced before those devices ever leave the fab, but the cost of developing the necessary tests and analyzing the data has sharply limited adoption. Determining an acceptable test escape metric for an IC is essential to improving the yield-to-quality ratio in chip manufacturing, but what exactly is... » read more

Developers Turn To Analog For Neural Nets


Machine-learning (ML) solutions are proliferating across a wide variety of industries, but the overwhelming majority of the commercial implementations still rely on digital logic for their solution. With the exception of in-memory computing, analog solutions mostly have been restricted to universities and attempts at neuromorphic computing. However, that’s starting to change. “Everyon... » read more

Tapping Into Non-Volatile Logic


Research is underway to develop a new type of logic device, called non-volatile logic (NVL), based on ferroelectric FETs. FeFETs have been a topic of high interest at recent industry conferences, but the overwhelming focus has been using them in memory arrays. The memory bit cell, however, is simply a transistor that can store a state. That can be leveraged in other applications. “Non-v... » read more

Next-Gen Design Challenges


As more heterogeneous chips and different types of circuitry are designed into one system, that all needs to be simulated, verified and validated before tape-out. Aveek Sarkar, vice president of engineering at Synopsys, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the intersection of scale complexity and systemic complexity, the rising number of corners, and the reduced margin with which to buffe... » read more

Latest IC Forecast: Big Demand, Shortages


Over the last year, the semiconductor industry has seen its share of highs, lows and uncertainties. In early 2020, the business looked bright, but the IC market dropped amid the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. Throughout 2020 different countries implemented a number of measures to mitigate the outbreak, such as stay-at-home orders and business closures. Economic turmoil and job losses soon follo... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 23


Detecting early damage in power electronics Researchers at Osaka University to detect early damage in power electronics. The team used acoustic emission analysis to monitor in real time the propagation of cracks in a silicon carbide Schottsky diode during power cycling tests. During the power cycling test, the researchers mimicked repeatedly turning the device on and off, to monitor the res... » read more

Brute-Force Analysis Not Keeping Up With IC Complexity


Much of the current design and verification flow was built on brute force analysis, a simple and direct approach. But that approach rarely scales, and as designs become larger and the number of interdependencies increases, ensuring the design always operates within spec is becoming a monumental task. Unless design teams want to keep adding increasing amounts of margin, they have to locate th... » read more

Increase In Analog Problems


Analog and mixed signal design has always been tough, but a resent survey suggests that the industry has seen significantly increased failures in the past year because the analog circuitry within an ASIC was out of tolerance. What is causing this spike in failures? Is it just a glitch in the data, or are these problems real? The answer is complicated, and to a large extent it depends heavily... » read more

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