Memory Test Challenges, Opportunities


The semiconductor capital equipment market is on fire, and the memory chip test equipment sector is no different. But it is getting much more difficult on the memory side. Memory test vendors are contending with next-generation devices, such as 3D NAND flash memories, HBM2 chips, low-power double-data-rate DRAMs, graphics DRAMs, phase-change memories, magnetoresistive RAMs, and resistive RAM... » read more

Tech Talk: TCAM


Dennis Dudeck, IP solutions FAE at eSilicon, talks about how to save power and area with ternary content addressable memory. https://youtu.be/y1FhdoNdzOw » read more

NVDIMM Market Buoyed By Evolving Data Center Demands


The NVDIMM market A recent report published by Transparency Market Research (TMR) confirms that the global Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Module (NVDIMM) market is being propelled by an increased demand for advanced data center infrastructure. Indeed, NVDIMMs offer fault-tolerant data integrity, while simultaneously optimizing the performance of storage and cache, as well as indexing, messag... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 29


Colored solar panels Researchers from AMOLF, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) developed a technology to create efficient bright green solar panels in the hopes that a greater array of colors will prompt greater adoption among architects and builders who might see the traditional blue or black panels as an eyesore. The panels have a gr... » read more

Four Foundries Back MRAM


Four major foundries plan to offer MRAM as an embedded memory solution by this year or next, setting the stage for what finally could prove to be a game-changer for this next-generation memory technology. GlobalFoundries, Samsung, TSMC and UMC plan to start offering spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive RAM (ST-MRAM or STT-MRAM) as an alternative or a replacement to NOR flash, possibly start... » read more

What Is Spin Torque MRAM?


The memory market is going in several different directions at once. On one front, the traditional memory types, such as DRAM and flash, remain the workhorse technologies. Then, several vendors are readying the next-generation memory types. As part of an ongoing series, Semiconductor Engineering will explore where the new and traditional memory technologies are heading. For this segment, P... » read more

Memory Market: More Than ASPs At Risk


By Adrienne Downey and Jim Feldhan In June 2016, the memory market emerged from its slump after reversing its 12-month ASP decline. Since then, we’ve seen a strong rebound for ASPs in both DRAM and NAND. Contributing to this recovery was the increasing demand in memory content per device across all end markets combined with a more controlled capital investment over the past several years.... » read more

Rethinking Computing Fundamentals


New compute architectures—not just new chips—are becoming a common theme in Silicon Valley these days. The whole semiconductor industry is racing to find the fastest, cheapest, lowest-power approach to processing. The drivers of this shift are well documented. Moore's Law is slowing down, in part because it's becoming more difficult to route signals across an SoC at the latest process no... » read more

Using CNNs To Speed Up Systems


Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are becoming one of the key differentiators in system performance, reversing a decades-old trend that equated speed with processor clock frequencies, the number of transistors, and the instruction set architecture. Even with today's smartphones and PCs, it's difficult for users to differentiate between processors with 6, 8 or 16 cores. But as the amount o... » read more

Enabling Higher System Performance With NVDIMM-N


The shift from the traditional enterprise data center to the cloud is driving an insatiable demand for increased bandwidth and lower latencies. This is fundamentally reshaping traditional memory, storage, network and computing architectures. Although the semiconductor industry has been innovating to meet the needs of these new architectures, it continues to grapple with a waning Moore’s Law t... » read more

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