Moore’s Law Reset?

By Ed Sperling - 13 Jul, 2015 - Comments: 0

GlobalFoundries today took the wraps off its 22nm FD-SOI process, promising to extend Moore's Law technologically without altering the economic equation—at least for the next couple of process nodes. Subramani Kengeri, vice president of global design solutions at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"], said 22nm FD-SOI will provide the same 30% improvement in PPA that has been c... » read more

Moore Memory Problems

By Brian Bailey - 09 Jul, 2015 - Comments: 0

The six-transistor static memory cell (SRAM) has been the mainstay of on-chip memory for several decades and has stood the test of time. Today, many advanced SoCs have 50% of the chip area covered with these memories and so they are critical to continued scaling. “The SRAM being used in modern systems is similar to the SRAM they were using in the 1970s and 1980s,” says Duncan Bremner, ch... » read more

Foundries Expand Planar Efforts

By Mark LaPedus - 18 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Competition is heating up in the leading-edge foundry business, as vendors begin to ramp up their new 16nm/14nm finFET processes. But that’s not the only action in the foundry arena. They are also expanding their efforts in the leading-edge planar market by rolling out new 28nm and 22nm processes. On one front, TSMC is offering new 28nm variants, based on bulk CMOS technology. And on an... » read more

What’s Different At 16/14nm?

By Ed Sperling - 28 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Will finFETs live up to their promise? It depends on whom you ask, when you ask that question, and the intended application of a design. But across the semiconductor industry, there is general agreement that it's getting easier to work at the most advanced nodes as tools and flows are better understood and overall experience increases. There is no question that [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFE... » read more

Get Agile

By Randy Smith - 28 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

History repeats itself, but frequently not in the exactly the same place. The problems faced by system engineering teams today—rising complexity, shorter market windows and more issues involving interactions that affect everything from dynamic power and leakage current to electromigration and finFET design—mirror the kinds of top-down issues that software developers began encountering more ... » read more

What’s After 10nm?

By Ed Sperling - 21 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Prior to 28nm the semiconductor road map was astoundingly predictable. Every two years you could be assured that features would shrink until there were no more atoms left. Two big things and lots of little things later, the trajectory looks much more uncertain. On the large things side are the obvious culprits—EUV delays, and RC delay caused by thinner wires. This is tough science. Pro... » read more

How Hard Is FD-SOI Design?

By Ann Mutschler - 21 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator ([getkc id="220" kc_name="FD-SOI"]) manufacturing technology reached of point of readiness for mass production at the end of March. Along with that, it’s now clear that while there are some impacts on the design flow, those impacts are not game changers. For one thing, the tools required are the same ones currently used for 28nm planar bulk CMOS. The onl... » read more

One-On-One: Thomas Caulfield

By Mark LaPedus - 21 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about fabs, process technology and the equipment industry with Thomas Caulfield, senior vice president and general manager of Fab 8 at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"]. Located in Saratoga County, N.Y., Fab 8 is GlobalFoundries’ most advanced 300mm wafer fab. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: Last year, GlobalFoundr... » read more

Rethinking Power

By Ed Sperling - 14 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Power typically has been the last factor to be considered in the PPA equation, and it usually was somebody else's problem. Increasingly it's everyone's problem, and EDA companies are beginning to look at power differently than in the past. While the driving forces vary by market and by process node, the need to save energy at every node and in almost all designs is pervasive. In the server m... » read more

Accelerating Development For LP

By Brian Bailey - 14 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Power is a limiting factor in all devices these days, and while most of the industry has seen this coming for several process nodes and a succession of mobile devices with limited battery life, the power problem remains a work in progress. No matter how much progress is made—and there has been plenty of work done in the areas of multiple power domains, dark silicon, dynamic voltage and fr... » read more

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