EDA Vendors Widen Use Of AI


EDA vendors are widening the use of AI and machine learning to incorporate multiple tools, providing continuity and access to consistent data at multiple points in the semiconductor design flow. While gaps remain, early results from a number of EDA tools providers point to significant improvements in performance, power, and time to market. AI/ML has been deployed for some time in EDA. Still,... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Markets Worldwide semiconductor industry revenue is expected to grow 17.3% in 2021, compared with 10.8% in 2020, according to a new IDC report. Segment breakdown is as follows: [table id=5 /] “Semiconductor wafer prices increased in 1H21 and IDC expects increases to continue for the rest of 2021 due to material costs and opportunity cost in mature process technologies. Overall, IDC pre... » read more

Building Complex Chips That Last Longer


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about design challenges in advanced packages and nodes with John Lee, vice president and general manager for semiconductors at Ansys; Shankar Krishnamoorthy, general manager of Synopsys' Design Group; Simon Burke, distinguished engineer at Xilinx; and Andrew Kahng, professor of CSE and ECE at UC San Diego. This discussion was held at the Ansys IDEAS co... » read more

System-In-Package Thrives In The Shadows


IC packaging continues to play a big role in the development of new electronic products, particularly with system-in-package (SiP), a successful approach that continues to gain momentum — but mostly under the radar because it adds a competitive edge. With a SiP, several chips and other components are integrated into a package, enabling it to function as an electronic system or sub-system. ... » read more

Nudging 2D semiconductors forward


The buzz about 2D materials replacing silicon appears to be premature. While 2D semiconductors have emerged as potential successors, it's not clear when or even if that will happen. As Iuliana Radu, Imec's director of quantum and exploratory computing observed, the “end” of silicon has been predicted many times before. It is not clear when 2D semiconductors will need to be ready. In fac... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs Intel plans to establish foundry capacity at its fab in Ireland. The company has also launched the so-called Intel Foundry Services Accelerator to help automotive chip designers transition from mature to advanced nodes. The company is setting up a new design team and offering both custom and industry-standard intellectual property (IP) to support the needs of automotive custom... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Intel’s Mobileye and Sixt SE said they are collaborating on an autonomous ride-hailing services in Munich in 2022. Mobileye will own the robotaxi fleet. Mobileye also recently unveiled its electric autonomous vehicle (AV), which it will use in ridehailing in Munich and Tel Aviv.. To increase the supply of automotive chips, Intel said it will build new chip manufacturing facilit... » read more

The Next Generation Of General-Purpose Compute At Hot Chips


At the recent HOT CHIPS, the first day opened with the chips that you first think of when you hear the word processor. These are the next generation of chips from the likes of Intel, AMD, and IBM. There were lots of other chips too, such as Arm's Neoverse N2, and NVIDIA's new data-processing unit (DPU), or AMD's next-generation graphics architecture. But for this post, anyway, I'm going to focu... » read more

Will Monolithic 3D DRAM Happen?


As DRAM scaling slows, the industry will need to look for other ways to keep pushing for more and cheaper bits of memory. The most common way of escaping the limits of planar scaling is to add the third dimension to the architecture. There are two ways to accomplish that. One is in a package, which is already happening. The second is to sale the die into the Z axis, which which has been a to... » read more

Will Automotive Ethernet Win?


As internal combustion engines are replaced by electric motors, and mechanical linkages increasingly replaced by electronic messaging, an in-vehicle network is needed to facilitate communication. Ethernet, amended for automotive and other time-sensitive applications, appears to be the network of choice. But is that choice a done deal? And will Ethernet replace all other in-car networks? The ... » read more

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