Millimeter Wave: A Bridge Too Far?

By Ed Sperling - 06 Feb, 2020 - Comments: 1

5G is here. It already is available in new mobile phones, and the infrastructure for extremely fast cellular communication is being built out at a rapid pace. The big question now is which parts of this technology will be successful, and there still is no consistency in those predictions. 5G comes in two flavors, sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave, and the sub-6 GHz version offers immediate perfo... » read more

Testing Autonomous Vehicles

By Ed Sperling - 16 Dec, 2019 - Comments: 0

Jeff Phillips, head of automotive marketing at National Instruments, talks about how to ensure that automotive systems are reliable and safe, how test needs to shift to adapt to continual updates and changes, and why this is particularly challenging in a world where there is no known right answer. » read more

Preparing For The Great Auto War

By Ed Sperling - 05 Dec, 2019 - Comments: 7

The internal combustion engine's days are numbered, and what comes next is going to cause one of the biggest upheavals in the history of business. Before semiconductors and electronics, it was the auto industry that defined economies of scale. In fact, the auto industry became the model on which the entire electronics industry was built. It always was assumed that the mainframe, minicomputer... » read more

Betting On Hydrogen-Powered Cars

By Ann Mutschler - 05 Dec, 2019 - Comments: 10

The automotive industry is taking another look at hydrogen fuel cells, but how they ultimately fare depends on a combination of consumer demand, automaker investment and infrastructure build-out. Hydrogen fuel cell technology has been steadily advancing over the past six decades since the first practical fuel cell system was demonstrated by Cambridge engineering professor Francis Bacon. The ... » read more

Is There A Crossover Point For Mainstream Anymore?

By Ed Sperling - 21 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Until 28nm, it was generally assumed that process nodes would go mainstream one or two generations after they were introduced. So by the time the leading edge chips for smartphones and servers were being developed at 16/14nm and 10/7nm, it was assumed that developing a chip at 28nm would be less expensive, less complex, and that the process rule deck would shrink. That worked for decades. Th... » read more

New Trends In Wafer Bonding

By Katherine Derbyshire - 21 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Unable to scale horizontally, due to a combination of lithography delays and power constraints, manufacturers are stacking devices vertically. This has become essential as the proliferation of mobile devices drives demand for smaller circuit footprints, but the transition isn't always straightforward. Three-dimensional integration schemes take many forms, depending on the required interconne... » read more

Why Standard Memory Choices Are So Confusing

By Ann Mutschler - 19 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

System architects increasingly are developing custom memory architectures based upon specific use cases, adding to the complexity of the design process even though the basic memory building blocks have been around for more than half a century. The number of tradeoffs has skyrocketed along with the volume of data. Memory bandwidth is now a gating factor for applications, and traditional memor... » read more

Making Random Variation Less Random

By Ed Sperling - 21 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 0

The economics for random variation are changing, particularly at advanced nodes and in complex packaging schemes. Random variation always will exist in semiconductor manufacturing processes, but much of what is called random has a traceable root cause. The reason it is classified as random is that it is expensive to track down all of the various quirks in a complex manufacturing process or i... » read more

EDA Revenue Up 6.6% For Q2

By Ann Mutschler - 17 Sep, 2019 - Comments: 0

Highlighted by double digit growth in semiconductor IP and the Asia/Pacific region, EDA industry revenue increased 6.6% for Q2 2019 to $2,472.1 million, compared to $2,318.5 million in Q2 2018, according to the ESD Alliance Market Statistics Service. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 6%, which represented a... » read more

Getting Granular On The Edge

By Ed Sperling - 05 Sep, 2019 - Comments: 0

Imagine a plane flying at 30,000 feet. Two things are visible—clouds and land. In the processing world, that land mass is the edge, and as the plane begins to descend the edge begins to take on a more distinct shape and different features begin to appear. From the air, everyone can see just how large this market opportunity is. What they can't make out are the winning models for success. B... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer

tag: economics