Chip Industry’s Technical Paper Roundup: Mar. 28


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=89 /] If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a good fit for our global audience. At a minimum, papers need to be well researched and documented, relevant to the semiconductor ecosystem, and free of marketing bias. There is no cost involved for us p... » read more

Integrating MEMS with Standardized Silicon Photonics Technology


A new technical paper titled "Integrated silicon photonic MEMS" was published by researchers at EPFL, University of Sydney, CSEM, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Ghent University, Imec, and Tyndall National Institute. Abstract Excerpt "Here, we introduce a silicon photonic MEMS platform consisting of high-performance nano-opto-electromechanical devices fully integrated alongside standar... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 24


Low power AI Engineers at the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) designed an SoC for edge AI applications that can run on solar power or a small battery. The SoC consists of an ASIC chip with RISC-V processor developed at CSEM along with two tightly coupled machine-learning accelerators: one for face detection, for example, and one for classification. The first is a bin... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 19


Tandem solar reaches 25.2% efficiency In the push for ever-more efficient solar panels, researchers are turning to tandem, or double-junction, photovoltaics. Tandem solar panels use two different types of solar cell capable of absorbing different wavelengths of light stacked on top of each other to maximize the conversion of light rays into electrical power. Recently, two groups have reache... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


IP Arastu Systems uncorked a LPDDR3 DRAM Memory Controller. The controller is fully compliant with JEDEC standard JESD209-3C and supports various power down modes as well as multiple channels with a privilege to configure and manage each channel independently and parameterized data width. CSEM's Bluetooth Low Energy silicon RF IP has been validated as Bluetooth 5 compatible. RF test equip... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 12


Incandescent bulbs might not be dead yet Can incandescent bulbs be as efficient – or even more so – than LEDs? More than 95 percent of the energy that goes into incandescents is wasted, most of it as heat, so researchers at MIT and Purdue University struck out to see if that could be changed. A conventional heated metal filament, with all its attendant losses, served as the basis. But... » read more