Radiation, Temperature, Power Challenges For Chips In Space


Mission-critical hardware used in space is not supposed to fail at all, because lives may be lost in addition to resources, availability, performance, and budgets. For space applications, failure can occur due to a range of factors, including the weather on the day of launch, human error, environmental conditions, unexpected or unknown hazards and degradation of parts to chemical factors, aging... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis of changes at Intel Foundry. Intel rolled out its updated process technology roadmap this week, along with early process design kit (PDK) for its 14A gate-all-around process technology. That node will utilize high-NA EUV, and include direct contact power delivery, the second generation of its backside power delivery techno... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


To listen to the podcast version, click here. TSMC unveiled an unusually detailed roadmap at this week's North America Technology Symposium, including future architectures for 3D-ICs for high-performance computing and small, extremely low-power chips for AR/VR glasses, and two implementations of system-on-wafer. Fig. 1: TSMC's future packaging and stacking roadmap. Source: TSMC The ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Don't have time to read this? Check out Semiconductor Engineering's Inside Chips podcast.  The U.S. Department of Commerce is investigating TSMC for potential export control violations involving Huawei chips, reports Reuters. The probe follows TechInsights' teardown of a Huawei AI accelerator chip last year. The foundry, meanwhile, maintains it has not shipped any chips to Huawei since 2020... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Check out our new Inside Chips podcast. President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs were announced this week. The executive order stated that semiconductors and copper imports are not directly subject to the reciprocal tariff, although the exemption may be short-lived. Semiconductor equipment and tools were not mentioned, leaving the industry searching for clarification. Regardless, hig... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


McKinsey issued a new report on the state of the chemical supply chain for semiconductors in the U.S., citing potential shortages of high-purity materials such as tungsten, aluminum and copper, lack of access to CMP slurries and photoresists for EUV, and rising competition for high-k precursors that can fetch higher prices outside of the U.S. CSIS weighed in on the U.S. goverment's recent ... » read more

HW Implementation Of An ONN Coupled By A ReRAM Crossbar Array (IBM, TU Eindhoven)


A new technical paper titled "Hardware Implementation of Ring Oscillator Networks Coupled by BEOL Integrated ReRAM for Associative Memory Tasks" was published by researchers at IBM Research Europe and Eindhoven University of Technology. Abstract "We demonstrate the first hardware implementation of an oscillatory neural network (ONN) utilizing resistive memory (ReRAM) for coupling elements. ... » read more

Sustainable AI Systems For Energy-Efficient Computing


By Pushkar Apte, Jim Sexton, and Melissa Grupen-Shemansky The world is abuzz with the new opportunities being created by artificial intelligence (AI), enabled by the availability of unprecedented amounts of data. AI runs on the semiconductor engine, and in turn, creates a rising demand for semiconductor chips. The semiconductor industry is predicted to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030 ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


ASML and imec signed a five-year strategic partnership to advance semiconductor innovation and sustainable technology. The collaboration will leverage ASML’s full product portfolio, including high-NA EUV, DUV immersion, and advanced metrology tools, within imec’s pilot line for sub-2nm R&D. Supported by EU and national funding, it will also drive research in silicon photonics, memory, a... » read more

Reducing Voltage Guard Band


The 2025 International Solid State Circuits Conference was held in San Francisco from February 16th to 20th. IBM presented three papers[1,2,3] based on their Samsung 5nm Tellum II chip. These are interesting in terms of the technology and the specifics about the design and measures taken to improve energy efficiency and reduce power. My first remembrance of a company specializing in guard-ba... » read more

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