Google Cloud—A View From The Top


I recently had the opportunity to attend a retreat-style event in Napa Valley hosted by the Google Cloud team. Like many such events I’ve attended over the years, the guests were treated to excellent accommodations, fabulous food, a good amount of free time for networking or to partake in activities, relevant and on-point presentations and world-class wine (this is Napa Valley after all). All... » read more

Test Chips Play Larger Role At Advanced Nodes


Test chips are becoming more widespread and more complex at advanced process nodes as design teams utilize early silicon to diagnose problems prior to production. But this approach also is spurring questions about whether this approach is viable at 7nm and 5nm, due to the rising cost of prototyping advanced technology, such as mask tooling and wafer costs. Semiconductor designers have long b... » read more

Verification In The Cloud


Christen Decoin, senior director of business development at Synopsys, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about what’s changed for EDA in the cloud, why it has taken so long, and what new benefits the cloud will offer. Rules have changed at foundries, and the customer base for designs is evolving. » read more

CEO Outlook: Rising Costs, Chiplets, And A Trade War


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss what's changing across the semiconductor industry with Wally Rhines, CEO emeritus at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jack Harding, president and CEO of eSilicon; John Kibarian, president and CEO of PDF Solutions; and John Chong, vice president of product and business development for Kionix. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which was held in... » read more

Factoring Reliability Into Chip Manufacturing


Making chips that can last two decades is possible, even if it's developed at advanced process nodes and is subject to extreme environmental conditions, such as under the hood of a car or on top of a light pole. But doing that at the same price point as chips that go into consumer electronics, which are designed to last two to four years, is a massively complex challenge. Until a couple of y... » read more

Wrestling With High-Speed SerDes


SerDes has emerged as the primary solution in chips where there is a need for fast data movement and limited I/O, but this technology is becoming significantly more challenging to work with as speeds continue to rise to offset the massive increase in data. A Serializer/Deserializer is used to convert parallel data into serial data, allowing designers to speed up data communication without h... » read more

Power, Reliability And Security In Packaging


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced packaging with Ajay Lalwani, vice president of global manufacturing operations at eSilicon; Vic Kulkarni, vice president and chief strategist in the office of the CTO at ANSYS; Calvin Cheung, vice president of engineering at ASE; Walter Ng, vice president of business management at UMC; and Tien Shiah, senior manager for memory at Samsun... » read more

System Bits: June 18


Another win for aUToronto Photo credit: University of Toronto The University of Toronto’s student-led self-driving car team racked up its second consecutive victory last month at the annual AutoDrive Challenge in Ann Arbor, Mich. The three-year challenge goes out to North American universities, offering a Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle to outfit with autonomous driving technology.... » read more

Thinking Differently About IIoT Analytics


Manufacturers are rushing to keep up with the latest technology trends and perhaps the most significant ones are around the smart factory. Whether you call it Industry 4.0, Smart Manufacturing or the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), what all these initiatives have in common is the desire to maximize value from manufacturing data and improve overall manufacturing efficiency. With the ave... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Products/Services Mentor, a Siemens Business, announced the release of the final phase of the Valor software New Product Introduction design-for-manufacturing technology, automating printed circuit board design reviews. The company has integrated DFM technology into the Xpedition software layout application. Arteris IP reports that Toshiba has taped out its next-generation advanced driv... » read more

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