Moore Memory Problems


The six-transistor static memory cell (SRAM) has been the mainstay of on-chip memory for several decades and has stood the test of time. Today, many advanced SoCs have 50% of the chip area covered with these memories and so they are critical to continued scaling. “The SRAM being used in modern systems is similar to the SRAM they were using in the 1970s and 1980s,” says Duncan Bremner, ch... » read more

Electronic Labeling Takes Off


One hit product for the Internet of Things (IoT) market is the electronic shelf label (ESL). The ESL is rapidly replacing the paper price labels on store shelves throughout Europe and Asia, as well as within retail giants such as Walmart in the United States. But why are retailers replacing nearly zero cost paper labels with an electronic widget that sells for on the order of $5 each (prici... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 2


Printing RF antennas with graphene ink Researchers from the University of Manchester, together with BGT Materials Limited, a graphene manufacturer in the United Kingdom, printed a radio frequency antenna using compressed graphene ink. The antenna performed well enough to make it practical for use in RFID tags and wireless sensors, the researchers said. Even better, the antenna is flexible, e... » read more

Next-Generation Parasitic Extraction For 16nm And Beyond


Advanced nodes and innovative process features such as finFET transistors require a leap forward in the performance and accuracy of analysis tools. The new Calibre xACT solution is a high-performance, high-accuracy parasitic extraction tool architected from the top-down for diverse IC design styles at advanced nodes. The Calibre xACT product delivers reference-level accuracy for leading-edge fi... » read more

High-Performance Analog And RF Circuit Simulation Using The Analog FastSPICE Platform At Columbia University


The research group led by Professor Peter Kinget at the Columbia University Integrated Systems Laboratory (CISL) focuses on cutting edge analog and RF circuit design using digital nanoscale CMOS processes. Areas of research include design techniques for circuits operating below 1 V, digitally calibrated RF front ends for superior linearity performance, LO synthesizers for wireless applications,... » read more

High-Performance Analog And RF Circuit Simulation Using The Analog FastSPICE Platform At Columbia University


The research group led by Professor Peter Kinget at the Columbia University Integrated Systems Laboratory (CISL) focuses on cutting edge analog and RF circuit design using digital nanoscale CMOS processes. Areas of research include design techniques for circuits operating below 1 V, digitally calibrated RF front ends for superior linearity performance, LO synthesizers for wireless applications,... » read more

Modeling High-Performance Analog And RF Circuits In Nanometer-Scale CMOS


By Mick Tegethoff and David Lee Today’s consumer, communication, and computer electronic devices have clocks, communication interfaces, and high-speed signal-conditioning circuits that operate at radio frequencies (RF). Providing price-competitive products often requires monolithic integration of these circuits in low-power nanometer-scale bulk CMOS silicon. This is a worst-case scenario for... » read more

What Will Change In Design For 2015?


This year more than 26 people provided predictions for 2015. Most of these came from the EDA industry, so the results may be rather biased. However, ecosystems are coming closer together in many parts of the semiconductor food chain, meaning that the EDA companies often can see what is happening in dependent industries and in the system design houses. Thus their predictions may have already res... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 23


Higgs boson sensors At the recent 2014 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, CERN described the tiny hybrid pixel detectors used at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Using CMOS technology, hybrid pixel detectors identify and tag individual sub-atomic particles at fast speeds. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is a particle physics laboratory... » read more

How To Test IoT Devices


At a recent event, test experts said the IC industry needs a new paradigm in testing chips for the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"] (IoT). The message was fairly simple to interpret. Existing automatic test equipment (ATE) is well suited to test today’s digital, analog, and mixed-signal chips, though it may be ill-equipped or too expensive to test IoT-based devices. But wha... » read more

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