Unsticking Moore’s Law


Sanjay Natarajan, corporate vice president at Applied Materials with responsibility for transistor, interconnect and memory solutions, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about variation, Moore's Law, the impact of new materials such as cobalt, and different memory architectures and approaches. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Reliability is becoming more of an... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 30


Cadence's Paul McLellan provides a primer on embedded memory types, their tradeoffs, and the emerging technologies to keep an eye on. Mentor's Matthew Ballance takes a look at how Portable Stimulus can help create better virtual sequences. Synopsys' Taylor Armerding takes a look at what the next year holds for open source, from changes in license terms to the impact of GDPR and a broader ... » read more

Variation Issues Grow Wider And Deeper


Variation is becoming more problematic as chips become increasingly heterogeneous and as they are used in new applications and different locations, sparking concerns about how to solve these issues and what the full impact will be. In the past, variation in semiconductors was considered a foundry issue, typically at the most advanced process node, and largely ignored by most companies. New p... » read more

Embedded Phase-Change Memory Emerges


The next-generation memory market for embedded applications is becoming more crowded as another technology emerges in the arena—embedded phase-change memory. Phase-change memory is not new and has been in the works for decades. But the technology has taken longer to commercialize amid a number of technical and cost challenges. Phase-change memory, a nonvolatile memory type that stores data... » read more

Keeping Up Power And Performance With Cobalt


Chip designers require simultaneous improvements in “PPAC”: power, performance and area/cost (Fig. 1). Achieving these improvements is becoming increasingly difficult as classic Moore's Law scaling slows. What's needed is a new playbook for the industry consisting of new materials, new architectures, new 3D structures within the chip, new methods to shrink feature geometries, and advanced p... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools and materials Applied Materials is expected to remain the world’s largest semiconductor equipment supplier in terms of projected sales for 2018, according to a preliminary forecast of the rankings from VLSI Research. Applied will have $14 billion in sales in 2018, according to the firm. Applied is the leader in terms of overall projected sales in 2018, followed in order by ASM... » read more

Chasing Reliability In Automotive Electronics


Assuring reliability in automotive electronics has set off a scramble across the semiconductor supply chain and unearthed a list of issues for which there is insufficient data, a lack of well-defined standards, and inconsistent levels of expertise. Reliable functional safety that spans 18 to 20 years of service in harsh environments, or under constant use with autonomous taxis or trucks, is ... » read more

The Next Semiconductor Revolution


What will drive the next semiconductor revolution? When you ask people with decades of experience in semiconductor manufacturing and software development, the answers include everything from AI and materials to neuromorphic architectures. Federico Faggin, designer of the world's first microprocessor; Terry Brewer, president and CEO of Brewer Science; Sanjay Natarajan, corporate vice presi... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 2


Better nanowire MOSFETs At the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Imec and Applied Materials presented a paper on a new and improved way to fabricate vertically stacked gate-all-around MOSFETs. More specifically, Imec and Applied reported on process improvements for a silicon nanowire MOSFET, which is integrated in a CMOS dual work function metal replacement metal ga... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 2


Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in as Uhnder CEO Manju Hegde explains the most critical issues impacting sensor development for autonomous vehicles and why new radar systems are needed to fill in the gaps. Synopsys' Fred Bals shares key points from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's investigation into the massive Equifax data breach that show how relatively small secu... » read more

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