Interconnects Essential To Heterogeneous Integration


Designing and manufacturing interconnects is becoming more complex, and more critical to device reliability, as the chip industry shifts from monolithic planar dies to collections of chips and chiplets in a package. What was once as simple as laying down a copper trace has evolved into tens of thousands of microbumps, hybrid bonds, through-silicon vias (TSVs), and even junctions for optical ... » read more

Jumpstarting The Automotive Chiplet Ecosystem


The automotive industry stands on the cusp of a technological renaissance, ushering in an era where vehicles aren't just tools of transportation, but interconnected nodes within a vast network of software-defined mobility. Central to this transformation is the concept of chiplets—miniaturized, modular components that can be mixed, matched, and scaled to create powerful, application-specific i... » read more

Blog Review: Mar. 27


Cadence's Steve Brown suggests that multi-die technologies will be a key part of the path toward a faster, more efficient chip ecosystem that can support the compressed development cycles now emerging in the automotive industry. Synopsys' John Swanson, Madhumita Sanyal, and Priyank Shukla point to the role of simulation in ensuring seamless operation in the Ethernet ecosystem though rigorous... » read more

Early STEM Education Key To Growing Future Chip Workforce


A key factor in building a domestic workforce for the chip industry is attracting kids to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects at a younger age. That way they are more likely to follow through and attain the skills and degrees needed to enter the semiconductor job market. Industry and government are partnering with schools and community organizations to address the chal... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Adam Kovac, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan. The U.S. government released a 61-page report, titled "National Strategy on Microelectronics Research,” by the Subcommittee On Microelectronics Leadership. It provides a framework for government, industry, academia, and international allies to address four major goals. Synopsys  acquired Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable func... » read more

Blog Review: March 20


Synopsys' Kiran Vittal delves into AI chips, including the expansion of chip design beyond traditional semiconductor companies, adoption of RISC-V, and the use of formal equivalence checking to verify complex AI datapaths. Siemens' Patrick McGoff points to a survey that suggests projects deploying design for manufacturing within a PCB design flow are more likely to be completed on-time, on-q... » read more

Optimizing Energy At The System Level


Power is a ubiquitous concern, and it is impossible to optimize a system's energy consumption without considering the system as a whole. Tremendous strides have been made in the optimization of a hardware implementation, but that is no longer enough. The complete system must be optimized. There are far reaching implications to this, some of which are driving the path toward domain-specific c... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. Europe's semiconductor footprint is growing in areas that previously had little association with chips. Silicon Box plans to build a panel-level foundry in northern Italy, funded in part by the Italian government. The deal is worth around €3.2 billion ($3.6B). In addition, imec will establish a specialized 300mm chip technology pilot line in M... » read more

The Rising Price Of Power In Chips


Power is everything when it comes to processing and storing data, and much of it isn't good. Power-related issues, particularly heat, dominate chip and system designs today, and those issues are widening and multiplying. Transistor density has reached a point where these tiny digital switches are generating more heat than can be removed through traditional means. That may sound manageable e... » read more

Easing Automotive Software Migration


The automotive industry is on the cusp of seismic change. Multiple trends are occurring simultaneously that are impacting the entire supply chain of the industry. Software-defined vehicles (SDVs), autonomy and electrification are motivating automotive OEMs to holistically rethink the vehicle’s software and hardware development cycles. To better manage multiple compute elements and increasi... » read more

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