IC Equipment Communication Standards Struggle As Data Volumes Grow


The tsunami of data produced during wafer fabrication cannot be effectively leveraged without standards. They determine how data is accessed from equipment, which users need data access and when, and how fast it can be delivered. On top of that, best practices in data governance and data quality are needed to effectively interpret collected data and transfer results. When fab automation and ... » read more

What’s Missing From Predictions


At this point everyone has made their predictions for the year, but there is one thing many people get wrong. Predictions are not about innovation. They are about pain and what is causing it. This industry is risk-averse, and everyone wants to continue doing what they are doing. But there comes a point when it's so painful to continue that something has to change. Having something that is... » read more

More Than Meets The Eye: Trends In Lithography


Lithography, once the exclusive domain of artists and printmakers, also lies at the heart of integrated circuit (IC) production. The process of shining light on a substrate through a photomask to control exposure has been around since the 1960s and has been the key part of improving IC fabrication process resolution. At the time, the light sources used were in the human-visible spectrum, which ... » read more

Power Budgets Optimized By Managing Glitch Power


“Waste not, want not,” says the old adage, and in general, that’s good advice to live by. But in the realm of chip design, wasting power is a fact of physics. Glitch power – power that gets expended due to delays in gates and/or wires – can account for up to 40% of the power budget in advanced applications like data center servers. Even in less high-powered circuits, such as those fou... » read more

Geometric-Aware Model Merging Approach To Enhance Instruction Alignment in Chip LLMs (Nvidia)


A new technical paper titled "ChipAlign: Instruction Alignment in Large Language Models for Chip Design via Geodesic Interpolation" was published by researchers at NVIDIA Research. Abstract: "Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have expanded their application across various domains, including chip design, where domain-adapted chip models like ChipNeMo have emerged. However, ... » read more

AI Won’t Replace Subject Matter Experts


Experts at The Table: The emergence of LLMs and other forms of AI has sent ripples through a number of industries, raising fears that many jobs could be on the chopping block, to be replaced by automation. Whether that’s the case in semiconductors, where machine learning has become an integral part of the design process, remains to be seen. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a panel of e... » read more

EDA Revenue Hit Record High In Q3


EDA and IP revenue increased 8.8% in Q3 2024, dragged down from the double-digit growth of recent quarters by a softening in sales to China, according to the most recent report by SEMI. For more than a decade, China's growth propped up the entire tools industry, reporting consistent double-digit growth growth that reached as high as 40% quarter over quarter. But with ongoing trade restrictio... » read more

Startup Challenges In A Changing EDA World


The Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry is a mature industry, but it's also one that is constantly changing. Each process node and packaging technology advancement places new demands and constraints on existing tools. In addition, changing design problems and paradigms transform how design teams operate, and the goals they target. For a relatively small industry, EDA requires a dispr... » read more

Semiconductor Engineering’s Special Reports 2024


Semiconductor Engineering published 36 special reports in 2024. Focus Areas Manufacturing, Packaging, Materials Test, Measurement New Fabs and Funding Memory Design Power, Performance Manufacturing, Packaging, Materials Navigating Increased Complexity In Advanced Packaging  Intel Vs. Samsung Vs. TSMC Hybrid Bonding Makes Strides Toward Manufacturability 3.5D: The Great Comp... » read more

Accelerating Artificial Intelligence Innovation With Concurrent Design Engineering


Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming every industry and creating new demands for computing performance, efficiency, and scalability. Designers are creating and deploying AI-dedicated chips to meet these challenges and enable faster and smarter applications across various domains, such as cloud, edge, mobile, automotive, and the Internet of Things (IoT). However, designing AI chips is no... » read more

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