AI’s Growing Impact On Chip Design

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

Synopsys chairman and co-CEO Aart de Geus sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the rapid infusion of AI into electronics, how that is changing chip design and the software that runs on those chips. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: We're dealing with a bunch of new markets, more customized design, and AI seems to be creeping into everything. How does this i... » read more

Chip Industry In Rapid Transition

By Ed Sperling - 09 Jan, 2019 - Comments: 0

Wally Rhines, CEO Emeritus at Mentor, a Siemens Business, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about global economics, AI, the growing emphasis on customization, and the impact of security and higher abstraction levels. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where do you see the biggest changes happening across the chip industry? Rhines: 2018 was a hot year for fab... » read more

Building Security into the Smart Home Devices with a Hardware Root of Trust

By Nisha Amshul - 11 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 1

The growth in the semiconductor industry over the past years has been driven heavily by the storage and compute needs on smartphones, computers, servers and data centers. These conventional drivers are set to change. New-age technologies like big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will fuel the demand for the future growth in semiconductors. Not only is IoT assi... » read more

The Case For Chiplets

By Ed Sperling - 10 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

Kandou’s Amin Shokrollahi looks at what’s behind the momentum for a LEGO-like approach, where the challenges are, and how the cost compares with other approaches. https://youtu.be/7QHEeagdLzk ___________________________________ Find more tech talk videos here . » read more

Why Test Costs Will Increase

By Ed Sperling - 08 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 0

The economics of test are under siege. Long seen as a necessary but rather mundane step in ensuring chip quality, or a way of testing circuitry from the inside while it is still in use, manufacturers and design teams have paid little attention to this part of the design-through-manufacturing flow. But problems have been building for some time in three separate areas, and they could have a b... » read more

The Next Big Chip Companies

By Ed Sperling - 05 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 1

Rambus’ Mike Noonen looks at why putting everything on a single die no longer works, what comes after Moore’s Law, and what the new business model looks like for chipmakers. https://youtu.be/X6Kca8Vm-wA » read more

The Security Penalty

By Ed Sperling - 13 Sep, 2018 - Comments: 0

It's not clear if Meltdown, Spectre and Foreshadow caused actual security breaches, but they did prompt big processor vendors like Intel, Arm, AMD and IBM to fix these vulnerabilities before they were made public by Google's Project Zero. While all of this may make data center managers and consumers feel better in one respect, it has created a level of panic of a different sort. For decades,... » read more

Hybrid Memory

By Ed Sperling - 13 Sep, 2018 - Comments: 0

Gary Bronner, senior vice president of Rambus Labs, talks about the future of DRAM scaling, why one type of memory won’t solve all needs, and what the pros and cons are of different memories. https://youtu.be/R0hhDx2Fb7Q » read more

Sorting Out Packaging Options

By Ed Sperling - 10 Sep, 2018 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced packaging with David Butler, executive vice president and general manager of SPTS Technologies; Ingu Yin Chang, senior vice president president at ASE Group; Hubert Karl Lakner, executive director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems; Robert Lo, division director for electronics and optoelectronics research at Industrial Te... » read more

The Hidden Cost Of Tariffs

By Ed Sperling - 16 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 1

The impact of tariffs on the semiconductor industry is just now being assessed, but there's a lot more to this picture than import and export duties. In fact, the biggest and longest-lasting effects may have less to do with taxing imports than what happens across the global supply chain that includes everything from manufacturing equipment to materials to investment capital. Import duti... » 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