More Data, More Redundant Interconnects


The proliferation of AI dramatically increases the amount of data that needs to be processed, stored, and moved, accelerating the aging of signal paths through which that data travels and forcing chipmakers to build more redundancy into the interconnects. In the past, nearly all redundant data paths were contained within a planar chip using a relatively thick silicon substrate. But as chipma... » read more

Die-to-die Interconnect Standards In Flux


UCIe, a standard for die-to-die interconnect in advanced packages, has drawn concern about being too heavyweight with its 2.0 release. But the fact that many of the new features are optional seems to have been lost in much of the public discussion. In fact, new capabilities that support a possible future chiplet marketplace are not required for designs that don’t target that marketplace. ... » read more

Development Flows For Chiplets


Chiplets offer a huge leap in semiconductor functionality and productivity, just like soft IP did 40 years ago, but a lot has to come together before that becomes reality. It takes an ecosystem, which is currently very rudimentary. Today, many companies have hit the reticle limit and are forced to move to multi-die solutions, but that does not create a plug-and-play chiplet market. These ear... » read more

UALink: Powering The Future Of AI Compute


On April 25, the UALink Consortium officially released the UALink 200G 1.0 Specification, marking an important milestone with support from key hyperscalar market players. It enables a low-latency, high-bandwidth fabric that supports hundreds of accelerators in a pod and facilitates simple load-and-store semantics. Motivation behind UALink The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) an... » read more

AI Accelerators Moving Out From Data Centers


Experts At The Table: The explosion in AI data is driving chipmakers to look beyond a single planar SoC. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the need for more computing and the expanding role of chiplets with Marc Meunier, director of ecosystem development at Arm; Jason Lawley, director of product marketing for AI IP at Cadence; Paul Karazuba, vice president of marketing at Expedera; ... » read more

Innovus+ Synthesis And Implementation System


The Innovus+ platform incorporates Innovus synthesis and Innovus implementation capabilities, all integrated into one unified environment for outstanding ease of use and power, performance, and area (PPA) results. Innovus+ Synthesis can be used standalone to generate physically aware netlists ready for handoff to other design teams, such as ASIC partners, or the implementation flow can conti... » read more

Blog Review: May 14


Siemens’ Stephen V. Chavez finds that proper PCB high voltage spacing between conductive elements is key to reliability and understanding the principles of clearance (through-air spacing) and creepage (along-surface spacing) is critical. Cadence’s Frank Ferro checks out how the new HBM4 standard boosts bandwidth and addresses key issues in the data center, including the growing size of L... » read more

Security Risks Mount For Aerospace, Defense Applications


Supply chain and hardware security vulnerabilities affect all industries, but they pose additional risks for the defense sector. Over-manufacturing and re-manufacturing allow chips from friendly nations to end up in the weapons of adversaries. And side-channel attacks such as power analysis or fault injection, as well as internet-based distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, provide a mea... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis. The U.S. government is rescinding a Biden-era AI export rule that would have imposed complex restrictions on how U.S. chip and AI technology is sold abroad, a move welcomed by companies like Nvidia, reports Bloomberg. While new, simpler guidelines are expected in the coming months, the decision introduces short-term uncer... » read more

Radiation, Temperature, Power Challenges For Chips In Space


Mission-critical hardware used in space is not supposed to fail at all, because lives may be lost in addition to resources, availability, performance, and budgets. For space applications, failure can occur due to a range of factors, including the weather on the day of launch, human error, environmental conditions, unexpected or unknown hazards and degradation of parts to chemical factors, aging... » read more

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