Co-Packaged Optics In The Data Center


Just because faster Ethernet is added to the data center doesn’t mean existing hardware can utilize it efficiently. Scott Durrant, strategic marketing manager at Synopsys, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the rapid rollout of faster Ethernet rates, problems in moving data to the front module of the switch and how much energy is required, and what optical technology can bring to the ... » read more

A Holistic Approach To Energy-Efficient System-On-Chip (SoC) Design


It takes a great deal of energy to power the modern world, and demand grows every day. This is especially true for electronics, where ever increasing automation and more intelligent devices incessantly demand more power. Many applications that use chips face a variety of pressures for reduced power consumption and better energy efficiency. In response, the semiconductor and electronic design au... » read more

Electronics And Sustainability: Can Smart Engineering Save The Planet?


We just celebrated Earth Day 2022 with great fanfare. In discussions with my favorite Gen Z family member, I sense genuine concerns that sustainability goals seem like a tall order. Let’s review the contributions the electronics industry can make to sustainability. First, defining sustainability seems to lead to three main pillars—environmental, social, and economic sustainability. I fou... » read more

DarkGates: A Hybrid Power-Gating Architecture to Mitigate the Performance Impact of Dark-Silicon in High Performance Processors


New research paper from ETH Zurich and others. Abstract "To reduce the leakage power of inactive (dark) silicon components, modern processor systems shut-off these components' power supply using low-leakage transistors, called power-gates. Unfortunately, power-gates increase the system's power-delivery impedance and voltage guardband, limiting the system's maximum attainable voltage (i.e., ... » read more

Antiferroelectric negative capacitance from a structural phase transition in zirconia


New research paper from 24-person research team from Berkeley, Georgia Tech, MIT, and other institutions. Abstract "Crystalline materials with broken inversion symmetry can exhibit a spontaneous electric polarization, which originates from a microscopic electric dipole moment. Long-range polar or anti-polar order of such permanent dipoles gives rise to ferroelectricity or antiferroelectrici... » read more

Moving Intelligence To The Edge


The buildout of the edge is driving a slew of new challenges and opportunities across the chip industry. Sailesh Chittipeddi, executive vice president at Renesas Electronics America, talks about the shift toward more AI-centric workloads rather than CPU-centric, why embedded computing is becoming the foundation of all intelligences, and the importance of software, security, and user experience ... » read more

Is Programmable Overhead Worth The Cost?


Programmability has fueled the growth of most semiconductor products, but how much does it actually cost? And is that cost worth it? The answer is more complicated than a simple efficiency formula. It can vary by application, by maturity of technology in a particular market, and in the context of much larger systems. What's considered important for one design may be very different for anothe... » read more

AI Goes Ultra Low Power — Part 1


Based on the concept of the new Federal Agency for Jump Innovations (PSRIN-D), the BMBF initiated three pilot innovation competitions. One of them presented the participants with the task of developing the most energy-efficient AI system possible as a hardware implementation on an ASIC or FPGA. With this, a stack of hundreds of two-minute long ECG signals should be analyzed with a minimum of en... » read more

Batteries Have Moving Parts


The race is on to make lithium-ion batteries safer, to increase the amount of energy that can be drawn out of these devices, and to reduce the time it takes to charge them up again. Transistors and other electronic components depend on the movement of electrons, which are effectively massless and dimensionless relative to the semiconductor, metal, and dopant atoms that surround them. A batte... » read more

Motional narrowing, ballistic transport, and trapping of room-temperature exciton polaritons in an atomically-thin semiconductor


Abstract "Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide crystals (TMDCs) hold great promise for semiconductor optoelectronics because their bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) are stable at room temperature and interact strongly with light. When TMDCs are embedded in an optical microcavity, excitons can hybridise with cavity photons to form exciton polaritons, which inherit useful properties from... » read more

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