MicroLEDs Move Toward Commercialization


The market for MicroLED displays is heating up, fueled by a raft of innovations in design and manufacturing that can increase yield and reduce prices, making them competitive with LCD and OLED devices. MicroLED displays are brighter and higher contrast than their predecessors, and they are more efficient. Functional prototypes have been developed for watches, AR glasses, TVs, signage, and au... » read more

Who Does Processor Validation?


Defining what a processor is, and what it is supposed to do, is not always as easy as it sounds. In fact, companies are struggling with the implications of hundreds of heterogenous processing elements crammed into a single chip or package. Companies have extensive verification methodologies, but not for validation. Verification is a process of ensuring that an implementation matches a specif... » read more

High-Level Synthesis For RISC-V


High-quality RISC-V implementations are becoming more numerous, but it is the extensibility of the architecture that is driving a lot of design activity. The challenge is designing and implementing custom processors without having to re-implement them every time at the register transfer level (RTL). There are two types of high-level synthesis (HLS) that need to be considered. The first is ge... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 26


GaN finFETs, scaling GaN At the upcoming IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, a slew of entities will present papers on the latest technologies in R&D. The event, to be held Dec. 11–15, involve papers on advanced packaging, CMOS image sensors, interconnects, transistors, power devices and other technologies. At IEDM, Intel will present a paper on a GaN-... » read more

July’19 Startup Funding


During the month of July, 21 technology startups took in mega-rounds of $100 million or more. Those companies together received more than $7.5 billion. On the other end of the financing spectrum, dozens of startups got seed funding or a Series A round. The dollar amounts were much smaller. Still, they are the beating heart of entrepreneurship around the world. It also was a month when som... » read more

Blog Review: May 8


Synopsys' Taylor Armerding warns that the threat of cyber war on the financial system is a real possibility and points to four major vulnerability concerns. Cadence's Meera Collier takes a look at bees and technology, from smart hives to sensors that can be carried on the insects' backs. Mentor's Brent Klingforth argues that electrical and mechanic designers need to seamlessly share infor... » read more

Systems Bits: Feb. 27


Prepare to prevent malicious AI use According to the University of Cambridge, 26 experts on the security implications of emerging technologies have jointly authored a ground-breaking report thereby sounding the alarm about the potential malicious use of artificial intelligence (AI) by rogue states, criminals, and terrorists. The report forecasts rapid growth in cyber-crime and the misuse of... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 6


Compressing data in vehicles As the number of cameras in automobiles is on the rise with the move to autonomous vehicles, internal vehicle networks are being pushed to their limits from the flood of data. While special compression methods reduce the amount of video data, they also exhibit a high degree of latency for coding. But now, Fraunhofer researchers have adapted video compression in su... » read more

System Bits: May 31


In automaton we trust? It is widely believed that there are two kinds of robots: friendly and helpful; or sinister and deadly. But do humans place too much trust in robots? According to the work of Harvard University senior Serena Booth, a computer science concentrator at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the answer is as complex and multifaceted as robots themsel... » read more

System Bits: April 28


Transistor encasing for better device performance ECE Illinois researchers have discovered a more effective method for closing gaps in atomically small wires. Led by Professor Joseph W. Lyding and graduate student Jae Won Do, the team reported this new transistor technology comprised of carbon nanotube wires shows promise in replacing silicon because it can operate 10 times as fast and is ... » read more

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