Week In Review: Design, Low Power


SK Hynix completed the first phase of its acquisition of Intel's NAND and SSD business. In this first step it took control Intel’s SSD business and the Dalian NAND flash manufacturing facility in China, for a price of $7 billion. Next, it will acquire from Intel the remaining assets in relation to its NAND business, including IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers, R&am... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive As part of its in-cabin monitoring wares at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2022, U.S.-based Gentex demonstrated the Vaporsens gas sensors, a nanofiber chemical sensor technology that monitors cabin air quality and can ID airborne contaminants. One use would be to monitor if outside contaminants get into the cabin, the sensor could trigger the car to turn on the recirculation of air... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 5


Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in on the challenges Tesla sees in manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles at scale and the types of battery chemistries it are currently using. Synopsys' Mark Kahan finds out the launch steps involved with the James Webb Space Telescope and the role of optical design software in creating the new instruments for Near IR and Mid IR sensing. Siemens' An... » read more

Challenges With Stacking Memory On Logic


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the changes in design tools and methodologies needed for 3D-ICs, with Sooyong Kim, director and product specialist for 3D-IC at Ansys; Kenneth Larsen, product marketing director at Synopsys; Tony Mastroianni, advanced packaging solutions director at Siemens EDA; and Vinay Patwardhan, product management group director at Cadence... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 21


Cadence's Paul McLellan points to Log4J, a logging utility with a new major vulnerability that could affect hundreds of millions of devices, what's being done to address it, and why the underlying problems may be around for decades. Siemens EDA's Ray Salemi continues explaining how to use Python for verification by checking out the Python logging module for pyuvm and how it compares to UVM r... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Memory CEA-Leti demonstrated 16-kbit ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM) arrays at the 130nm node. It utilizes back-end-of-line (BEOL) integration of TiN/HfO2:Si/TiN ferroelectric capacitors as small as 0.16 µm² and solder reflow compatibility for the first time for this type of memory. The researchers anticipate it will be useful for embedded applications such at IoT and wearable dev... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Features of Toyota’s key fobs for entering vehicles get turned off when drivers do not start paying a subscription fee when the complementary subscriptions end, says an article in Ars Technica. SiLC Technologies announced its compact Eyeonic Vision Sensor, a FMCW lidar sensor, is now commercially available. The sensor has a silicon photonic chip that keeps a lidar’s size down... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 15


Arm's Hannah Peeler, Joshua Randall, and Zach Lasiuk examine the carbon cost of data centers and introduce a tool that allows users to make informed decisions about the carbon impact of their compute workloads. Synopsys' Kenneth Larsen provides a primer on the fundamentals of quantum computing, the role of photonics in building quantum systems, and the future potential impact on chip design.... » read more

The Return Of DAC In-Person


Apart from masked faces everywhere, you could be excused for not knowing that there was a pandemic going on. Sure, the numbers were down, the show floor was smaller, and most of the parties didn't happen, but everyone was so happy to be able to bump elbows with their colleagues. Buttons were available for attendees to show the level of comfort they had with various types of greetings, from "... » read more

Can Coherent Optics Reduce Data-Center Power?


As optical bandwidth requirements increase, system designers are turning to “coherent” modulation schemes that can place more data on the same laser light, and lower power over long connections. A newer question is whether those savings could be achieved for short connections within data centers, as well. “Coherent is the direction everything's moving, because for a given system and... » read more

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