Power Estimation: Early Warning System Or False Alarm?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a large panel of experts to discuss the state of power estimation and to find out if the current levels of accuracy are sufficient to being able to make informed decisions. Panelists included: Leah Schuth, director of technical marketing in the physical design group at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Vic Kulkarni, senior vice president and general m... » read more

Memory Design At 16/14nm


As we get older the memory may start to fade, but that is not a viable option if we are talking about embedded memory. Chips contain increasing amounts of memory, and for many designs memory consumes more than half of the total chip area. “At 28nm we saw a few people with greater than 400Mbits of memory on chip,” says Prasad Saggurti, product marketing manager for Embedded Memory IP at [... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 16


Space DSA NASA's Physical Science Research Program is taking directed self-assembly (DSA) technology to new heights. On the International Space Station, astronauts are exploring the development of nanoparticles suspended in magnetorheolocial (MR) fluids. MR fluids, which are a new class of smart materials, self-assemble into shapes in the presence of a magnetic field. With the technology, r... » read more

Balancing The Cost Of Test


As semiconductor devices became larger and more complex, the cost of [getkc id="174" kc_name="test"] increased. Testers were large pieces of capital equipment designed to execute functional vectors at-speed and the technology being used had to keep up with increasing demands placed on them. Because of this, the cost of test did not decrease in the way that other high-tech equipment did. Around ... » read more

Five Disruptive Test Technologies


For years, test has been a critical part of the IC manufacturing flow. Chipmakers, OSATs and the test houses buy the latest testers and design-for-test (DFT) software tools in the market and for good reason. A plethora of unwanted field returns is not acceptable in today’s market. The next wave of complex chips may require more test coverage and test times. That could translate into higher... » read more

Test Challenges Grow


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss current and future test challenges with Dave Armstrong, director of business development at Advantest; Steve Pateras, product marketing director for Silicon Test Solutions at Mentor Graphics; Robert Ruiz, senior product marketing manager at Synopsys; Mike Slessor, president of FormFactor; and Dan Glotter, chief executive of Optimal+. SE: In our l... » read more

Improve Logic Test With A Hybrid ATPG/BIST Solution


Two test strategies are used to test virtually all IC logic—automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) with test pattern compression, and logic built-in self-test (BIST). For many years, there was a passionate debate between some DFT practitioners about which is the best test method— ATPG or BIST. ATPG has been dominant for years, and is now used for full-chip test across the electronics indu... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 11


By Ed Sperling Synopsys’ Eric Huang has unearthed the weirdest USB video ever produced—a dancing USB lighter. The messaging is pretty bizarre, too. Cadence’s Brian Fuller takes a whirlwind tour of the engineering accomplishments for the week. Check out the T-shirt message. Clearly they’re not talking about semiconductor engineers. Mentor’s Colin Walls looks at the Lua scripting... » read more

Experts At The Table: Automotive Electronics


By Ann Steffora Mutschler System-Level Design sat down to discuss the opportunities in automotive electronics with Alexandre Palus, principal SoC architect at Altera; Aveek Sarkar, VP of product engineering & support at Apache; Mladen Nizic, engineering director, mixed signal solution at Cadence; and Stephen Pateras, product marketing director, silicon test solutions at Mentor Graphics. Wh... » read more

3D Brings Test Into Fashion


By Ann Steffora Mutschler As integral and critical as test is to the success of an SoC, it isn’t always one of those topics in semiconductor design that seems fashionable. But as Bassilios Petrakis, director of product marketing for test products at Cadence pointed out, “[Test] is not in fashion, but when we hit one of those brick walls then suddenly we have to think how we are going to... » read more

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