Are Chips Getting More Reliable?


Reliability is emerging as a key metric in the semiconductor industry, alongside of power, performance and cost, but it also is becoming harder to measure and increasingly difficult to achieve. Most large semiconductor companies look at reliability in connection with consumer devices that last several years before they are replaced, but a big push into automotive, medical and industrial elec... » read more

Advanced Packaging Is Real. Now What?


For the past five years, it's been clear that 2.5D, fan-outs and other forms of system-in-package were on the horizon. Exactly when they would arrive no one knew. The most common prediction was that the timing would depend on when one of the big chipmakers decided to go down that route. The theory was that the remainder of the industry would follow, ecosystem issues would be sorted out—partic... » read more

What Goes Wrong With IP


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the future of IP with Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Judd Heape, vice president of product applications at Apical; and Bernard Murphy, an independent industry consultant. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which... » read more

What Goes Wrong With IP


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the future of IP with Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Judd Heape, vice president of product applications at Apical; and Bernard Murphy, an independent industry consultant. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 30


It's been a quiet week on the blog front. If you're looking for a bit of downtime while you enjoy the New Year, we present thoughts on what's happened this year and what may be to come from last week's System-Level Design newsletter: Editor in Chief Ed Sperling finds acquisitions and the leading edge of design defined 2015, but other changes are ahead. Technology Editor Brian Bailey obser... » read more

Science Fair — Redefined


Being a geek at heart from an early age, I recall entering many science fair competitions while growing up in New York. Once, I made it to the citywide finals with a model of how chain reactions happen using ball bearings. My illustrious invention career also included a seismograph, an electric arc light and a working DC motor. None of those made the cut, but they were fun to build. I’m sure ... » read more

Who’s Profiting From Complexity


Tool vendors' profits increasingly are coming from segments that performed relatively poorly in the past, reflecting both a rise in complexity in designing chips and big improvements in the tools themselves. The impacts of power, memory congestion, advanced-node effects such as process variation, [getkc id="160" kc_name="electromigration"] and RC delay in [getkc id="36" kc_name="interconnect... » read more

Rethinking Memory


Getting data in and out of memory is as important as the speed and efficiency of a processor, but for years design teams managed to skirt the issue because it was quicker, easier and less expensive to boost processor clock frequencies with a brute-force approach. That worked well enough prior to 90nm, and adding more cores at lower clock speeds filled the gap starting at 65nm. After that, th... » read more

What Goes Wrong With IP


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the future of IP with Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Judd Heape, vice president of product applications at Apical; and Bernard Murphy, an independent industry consultant. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which... » read more

New IP Risks


The world is being flooded with Internet-enabled devices, from smart toothbrushes to smart appliances to smart aircraft, and everything in between. Some of this is expected to be connected to the Internet, and some has been for quite some time. But devices such as smart toothbrushes and smart socks pose a whole new challenge. The issue is that even low-end chips need some sort of IP, but if ... » read more

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