Interconnects: Exploring Semi-Metals (Penn State, IBM, Rice University)


A technical paper titled "Exploring Topological Semi-Metals for Interconnects" was published by researchers at Penn State, IBM, and Rice University, with funding by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). Abstract "The size of transistors has drastically reduced over the years. Interconnects have likewise also been scaled down. Today, conventional copper (Cu)-based interconnects face a ... » read more

A Comparative Evaluation Of DRAM Bit-Line Spacer Integration Schemes


With decreasing dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) cell sizes, DRAM process development has become increasingly difficult. Bit-line (BL) sensing margins and refresh times have become problematic as cell sizes have decreased, due to an increase in BL parasitic capacitance (Cb). The main factor impacting Cb is the parasitic capacitance between the BL and the node contact (CBL-NC) [1]. To reduce ... » read more

CXL-Based Memory Pooling System Meets Cloud Performance Goals And Significantly Reduces DRAM Cost


A technical paper titled "Pond: CXL-Based Memory Pooling Systems for Cloud Platforms" was published by researchers at Virginia Tech, Intel, Microsoft Azure, Google, and Stone Co. Abstract "Public cloud providers seek to meet stringent performance requirements and low hardware cost. A key driver of performance and cost is main memory. Memory pooling promises to improve DRAM utilization and t... » read more

Dealing With Performance Bottlenecks In SoCs


A surge in the amount of data that SoCs need to process is bogging down performance, and while the processors themselves can handle that influx, memory and communication bandwidth are straining. The question now is what can be done about it. The gap between memory and CPU bandwidth — the so-called memory wall — is well documented and definitely not a new problem. But it has not gone away... » read more

Process Innovations Enabling Next-Gen SoCs and Memories


Achieving improvements in performance in advanced SoCs and packages — those used in mobile applications, data centers, and AI — will require complex and potentially costly changes in architectures, materials, and core manufacturing processes. Among the options under consideration are new compute architectures, different materials, including thinner barrier layers and those with higher th... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Chips for consumer devices are down, but the overall chip industry is actively preparing for the next phase of growth. Worldwide silicon wafer shipments, which are an aggregate view of all the various semiconductor segments, hit an all-time high in 2022, increasing 4% to 14,713 million square inches (MSI). Wafer revenue, meanwhile, rose 9.5% to $13.8 billion over the same period, SEMI reported ... » read more

Where Power Is Spent In HBM


HBM is gaining ground because of a spike in the amount of data that needs to be processed quickly, but big reductions in power are possible if that processing can be moved closer to the HBM modules, and if more can be done in each compute cycle without sending data back and forth to memory as frequently. Steven Woo, fellow and distinguished engineer at Rambus, talks about what can be done to bo... » read more

Improving Performance And Power With HBM3


HBM3 swings open the door to significantly faster data movement between memory and processors, reducing the power it takes to send and receive signals and boosting the performance of systems where high data throughput is required. But using this memory is expensive and complicated, and that likely will continue to be the case in the short term. High Bandwidth Memory 3 (HBM3) is the most rece... » read more

Efficiently Process Large RM Datasets In Underlying Memory Pool, Disaggregated Over CXL (KAIST)


A technical paper titled "Failure Tolerant Training with Persistent Memory Disaggregation over CXL" was published (preprint) by researchers at KAIST and Panmnesia. "TRAININGCXL can efficiently process large-scale recommendation datasets in the pool of disaggregated memory while making training fault tolerant with low overhead," states the paper. Find the technical paper here. or here (IEE... » read more

Choosing The Correct High-Bandwidth Memory


The number of options for how to build high-performance chips is growing, but the choices for attached memory have barely budged. To achieve maximum performance in automotive, consumer, and hyperscale computing, the choices come down to one or more flavors of DRAM, and the biggest tradeoff is cost versus speed. DRAM remains an essential component in any of these architectures, despite years ... » read more

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