tag: memory

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 26
By Jesse Allen - 26 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 0

New switchable material Two MIT researchers developed a thin-film material whose phase and electrical properties can be switched between metallic and semiconducting simply by applying a small voltage. The material then stays in its new configuration until switched back by another voltage. The discovery could pave the way for a new kind of nonvolatile memory. The findings involve the thin-... » read more

Shifting Performance Bottlenecks Driving Change In Chip And System Architectures
By Steven Woo - 14 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 0

The rise of personal computing in the 1980s — along with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and applications ranging from office apps to databases — drove the demand for faster chips capable of removing processing bottlenecks and delivering a more responsive end-user experience. Indeed, the semiconductor industry has certainly come quite a long way since IBM launched its PC way back in 1981. ... » read more

Smart Data Acceleration
By Rambus - 13 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 0

As an industry, if real progress is to be made towards the level of computing that the future mandates, then the way computing problems are attacked must change. The von Neumann execution model has and will continue to serve us well, but additional techniques must be brought to bear. The next logical focus area is data—how it is accessed, and how it is transformed into real information—t... » read more

Equipment Sales Were Mixed Bag In 2015
By Ed Sperling - 11 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor equipment billings were up in Q3 of 2015, the most recent statistics available from SEMI, compared with Q3 of 2014. The strongest growth was reported in China, which grew 63%, and Taiwan, which was up 22%. Billings in North America were down 23%, while in Korea they were down 22%. Europe was down 36%. Japan was up 2%, which is consistent with the growth seen in recent EDA C... » read more

A Closer Look At One-Time Programmable Embedded Memory
By Charlie Cheng - 07 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 1

Being the first month of the year, chip designers have probably reflected on 2015 and are thinking ahead to upcoming projects this year. They want to produce a product that reflects tomorrow’s needs for electronic devices that include low power, high performance and high security. Now, they’re thinking about embedded memory, a requirement for all electronic devices. It’s captured the atte... » read more

Changes In Chip Design
By Ernest Worthman - 07 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 0

We all know that sub-10nm is coming. But is that really what will define the next generation of semiconductors? Progress in semiconductor technology increasingly is not just about advancements in the hardware. It also involves advancements in applications and technologies peripheral to the devices themselves. That may sound counterintuitive, but going forward the technology, applications and... » read more

Reflections On 2015
By Brian Bailey - 22 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

It is easy to make predictions, but few people can make them with any degree of accuracy. Most of the time, those predictions are forgotten by the end of the year and there is no one to do a tally of who holds more credibility for next year. Not so with SemiEngineering. We like to hold people's feet to the fire, but while the Pants-On-Fire meter may be applicable to politicians, we like to thin... » read more

Rethinking Memory
By Ed Sperling - 16 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 3

Getting data in and out of memory is as important as the speed and efficiency of a processor, but for years design teams managed to skirt the issue because it was quicker, easier and less expensive to boost processor clock frequencies with a brute-force approach. That worked well enough prior to 90nm, and adding more cores at lower clock speeds filled the gap starting at 65nm. After that, th... » read more

Addressing Modern Bottlenecks With Smart Data Acceleration
By Steven Woo - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Over the past 30 years, the relentless progression of Moore’s Law has driven dramatic improvements in transistor counts and ultimately in processor performance. CPU performance was often the primary factor in determining overall system performance, leading us to believe that better CPUs led to better system performance. But, as processors have become more powerful, other subsystems have not k... » read more

Reflections On 2015
By Brian Bailey - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

It is easy to make predictions, but few people can make them with any degree of accuracy. Most of the time, those predictions are forgotten by the end of the year and there is no one to do a tally of who holds more credibility for next year. Not so with Semiconductor Engineering. We like to hold people's feet to the fire, but while the "Pants-On-Fire" meter may be applicable to politicians, we ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

Copyright ©2013-2026 SMG   |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy