The Process Design Kit: Protecting Design Know-How


Once upon a time, integrated circuits (ICs) were built by the same companies that designed them. The design of an IC was tightly integrated with the manufacturing processes available within each company. In these days, when designs contained hundreds of transistors, companies modeled each feature in an IC at a first principles level, meaning each transistor or fundamental device was analyzed an... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 7


Arm's Shidhartha Das looks into maximizing the benefits of power delivery networks and explains a non-intrusive technique using an on-chip digital storage oscilloscope that can directly sample the power-rails to probe potential runtime bugs due to power delivery weaknesses. Synopsys' Snigdha Dua argues that scrambling is one of the most important features introduced in HDMI 2.0 and takes a l... » read more

DARPA Seeks To Engage With MEMS Industry


Napa, Calif. — DARPA is looking for a few good members of the MEMS industry to offer advice and help to the agency’s Rapid Innovation for Production MEMS (RIPM) concept. Ronald Polcawich, a program manager for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office, presented the keynote address on the second and final day of the 2018 MEMS & Sensors Executive... » read more

Security for MEMS, Sensors


Napa, Calif. — The role of MEMS and sensors is growing as more devices are connected and more intelligence is added into those devices. But that has created its own set of issues involving security and privacy. “Our strategic landscape is changing,” observed Cynthia Wright, principal cybersecurity engineer at The MITRE Corp. and CEO of Synthus, during a keynote speech on day one of the... » read more

Wanted: Mask Equipment for Mature Nodes


Rising demand for chips at mature nodes is impacting the photomask supply chain, causing huge demand for trailing-edge masks and a shortfall of older mask equipment. The big issue is the equipment shortfall, which could impact customers on several fronts. Tool shortages could lead to longer mask turnaround times and delivery schedules for chips being developed at 90nm and above, which are bu... » read more

The State Of MEMS Process Standardization


SEMI spoke with Udo Gómez, senior vice president at Robert Bosch GmbH, about MEMS technology requirements relative to standard IC design and manufacturing. Gómez highlighted solutions to challenges of MEMS technology development and manufacturing ahead of his presentation at the 22nd Fab Management Forum at SEMICON Europa 2018, 13-16, November 2018, in Munich, Germany. To register for the... » read more

Proof-Of-Concept To Product: Initial Design Of A MEMS Sensor


In previous papers, we have covered how to design and verify an IoT tank fluid-level monitoring system. We covered how to create a proof-of-concept and prototype. In this series of white papers, we explore the detailed product design of the MEMS pressure sensor within this system. In this initial whitepaper, we introduce the piezoelectric micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (PMUT) sensor, show... » read more

Cryogenic Etch Re-Emerges


After years in R&D, a technology called cryogenic etch is re-emerging as a possible option for production as the industry faces new challenges in memory and logic. Cryogenic etch removes materials in devices with high aspect ratios at cold temperatures, although it has always been a challenging process. Cryogenic etch is difficult to control and it requires specialized cryogenic gases in... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 12


Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out the impact the Meltdown, Spectre, and Foreshadow vulnerabilities will have on future processor design with an overview of speculative execution and why it's important to current architectures. Mentor's Matthew Ballance suggests some ways to find existing information and descriptions that can be used to jump-start the creation of portable stimulus models. ... » read more

Dynamic Fault Injection For System-Level Simulation Of MEMS


In this paper a method for dynamic fault injection and fault simulation as well as its application to MEMS based sensor systems is described. The prerequisite for this approach is the availability of accurate, but numerically efficient models for the MEMS element. Simulations based on SystemC and SystemC AMS are suitable to analyze the nominal behavior of complex sys- tems including electronics... » read more

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