Heat-Related Issues Impact Reliability In Advanced IC Designs


Heat is becoming a much bigger problem in advanced-node chips and packages, causing critical electrons to leak out of DRAM, timing and reliability issues in 3D-ICs, and accelerated aging that are unique to different workloads. All types of circuitry are vulnerable to thermal effects. It can slow the movement of the electrons through wires, cause electromigration that shortens the lifespan of... » read more

System Bits: July 30


A camera that sees around corners Researchers at Stanford University developed a camera system that can detect moving objects around a corner, looking at single particles of light reflected on a wall. “People talk about building a camera that can see as well as humans for applications such as autonomous cars and robots, but we want to build systems that go well beyond that,” said Gordon... » read more

System Bits: July 23


Superconductivity seen in trilayer graphene Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley researchers discovered signs of superconductivity in stacking three-layer sheets of graphene, they report. “It’s definitely an exciting development,” says Cory Dean, a physicist at Columbia University. Dean notes that bilayer graphene superconducts only when the atomic lattices of ... » read more

Higher-Than-Ballistic Conduction of Viscous Electron Flows (MIT & Weizmann)


Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot  Israel Haoyu Guo, Ekin Ilseven, Gregory Falkovich, Leonid Levitov "A new finding by physicists at MIT and in Israel shows that under certain specialized conditions, electrons can speed through a narrow opening in a piece of metal more easily than traditional theory says is possible. This “superball... » read more