The Limits Of AI-Generated Models


In several recent stories, the subject of models has come up, and one recurrent theme is that AI may be able to help us generate models of a required abstraction. While this may be true in some cases, it is very dangerous in others. If we generalize, AI should be good for any model where the results are predominantly continuous, but discontinuities create problems. Unless those are found and... » read more

Anatomy Of A System Simulation


The semiconductor industry has greatly simplified analysis by consolidating around a small number of models and abstractions, but that capability is breaking down both at the implementation level and at the system level. Today, the biggest pressure is coming from the systems industry, where the electronic content is a small fraction of what must be integrated together. Systems companies tend... » read more

AI For Circuit Design Quality, Productivity, And Advanced-Node Mapping


The future of circuit design, encompassing analog, RF/5G, and custom electronic circuits, is set to be revolutionized by the integration of generative AI tools. These advanced tools will not only enhance the quality of designs and boost designer productivity but also facilitate the mapping of designs from older semiconductor process nodes to more advanced nodes such as 3nm and below. This blog ... » read more

Why A DSP Is Indispensable In The New World of AI


Chips being designed today for the automotive, mobile handset, AI-IoT (artificial intelligence - Internet of things), and other AI applications will be fabricated in a year or two, designed into end products that will hit the market in three or more years, and then have a product lifecycle of at least five years. These chips will be used in systems with a large number and various types of senso... » read more

Research Bits: October 24


Photonic-electronic hardware processes 3D data Researchers from the University of Oxford, University of Muenster, University of Heidelberg, and University of Exeter are developing integrated photonic-electronic hardware capable of processing three-dimensional data, which the team claims boosts data processing parallelism for AI tasks. The researchers added an extra parallel dimension to the... » read more

Energy Usage in Layers Of Computing (SLAC)


A technical paper titled “Energy Estimates Across Layers of Computing: From Devices to Large-Scale Applications in Machine Learning for Natural Language Processing, Scientific Computing, and Cryptocurrency Mining” was published by researchers at SLAC National Laboratory and Stanford University. Abstract: "Estimates of energy usage in layers of computing from devices to algorithms have bee... » read more

Big Changes Ahead For Photomask Technology


The move to curvilinear shapes on photomasks is gaining steam after years of promise as a way of improving yield, lowering defectivity, and reducing wasted space on a die — all of which are essential for both continued scaling and improved reliability in semiconductors. Interest in this approach ran high at this year's SPIE Photomask Technology + EUV Lithography Conference. Put simply, cur... » read more

AI Process Control Platform Enabling Next Generation Technology, Part 2


As feature dimensions in semiconductors continue to shrink and worldwide demand continues to expand, semiconductor equipment manufacturers need innovative ways to compete and deliver. The Tignis PAICe Maker physics-driven AI computational modeling platform accelerates leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing—from equipment R&D to reliable high-yield chip fabrication capability. Tignis sup... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Liz Allan, Jesse Allen, and Karen Heyman. Canon uncorked a nanoimprint lithography system, which the company said will be useful down to about the 5nm node. Unlike traditional lithography equipment, which projects a pattern onto a resist, nanoimprint directly transfers images onto substrates using a master stamp patterned by an e-beam system. The technology has a number of limitations and... » read more

Memory Technologies Key To Advancing AI Applications


Memory is an integral component in every computer system, from the smartphones in our pockets to the giant data centers powering the world’s leading-edge AI applications. As AI continues to rise in reach and complexity, the demand for more memory from data center to endpoints is reshaping the industry’s requirements and traditional approaches to memory architectures. According to OpenAI,... » read more

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