GlobalFoundries Rolls Out 12nm FD-SOI Process


GlobalFoundries uncorked its 12FDX platform, incorporating a 12nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator process technology. The foundry’s Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany, will support customer development with the 12nm process, with product tape-outs scheduled for the first six months of 2019. The 12FDX technology follows the company’s 22FDX platform involving a 22-nanometer process. The foundr... » read more

The Real Value Of Digital Horsepower


Chipmakers and systems vendors are beginning to experiment with a slew of new ways to beef up performance and reduce power and area, now that shrinking features no longer guarantees those improvements. The number of new ideas introduced at industry conferences in the past few months is almost mind-boggling. Just on the CPU side there are new architectures that improve the amount of work that... » read more

Noise Killed My Chip


In the past, noise was considered an annoyance, especially for analog circuitry. But today chips are actually failing because insufficient analysis was performed. Noise types that used to be second-order effects are becoming primary factors that have to be considered. This is happening at the same time that noise margins are getting smaller, both in the amplitude and temporal dimensions. It ... » read more

Implementing ESD Protection In Today’s SoCs


As the semiconductor industry transitions to FinFETs, reliability challenges are increasing. ESD designers are challenged with new issues that would require significant rethinking and redesign of their existing ESD protection strategy. With significant complexity embedded in the silicon, failure analysis and silicon debug is challenging and time consuming even to the ESD experts. Technology ... » read more

What’s Important For IoT—Power, Performance Or Integration?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Steve Hardin, director of product development for AT&T's IoT Solutions Group; Wayne Dai, CEO of VeriSilicon; John Koeter, vice president of the Solutions Group at [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"]; and Rajeev Rajan, vice president for IoT at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"]. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To vie... » read more

How Small Will Transistors Go?


By Mark LaPedus & Ed Sperling There is nearly universal agreement that Moore’s Law is slowing down. But whether it will truly end, or just become too expensive and less relevant—and what will supplant device scaling—are the subject of some far-reaching research and much discussion. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with each of the leaders of three top research houses—[getent... » read more

Optimization Challenges For 10nm And 7nm


Optimization used to be a simple timing against area tradeoff, but not anymore. As we go to each new node the tradeoffs become more complicated, involving additional aspects of the design that used to be dealt with in isolation. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these issues with Krishna Balachandran, director of product management for low-power products at [getentity id="22032"... » read more

What’s Important For IoT—Power, Performance Or Integration?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Steve Hardin, director of product development for AT&T's IoT Solutions Group; Wayne Dai, CEO of VeriSilicon; John Koeter, vice president of the Solutions Group at [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"]; and Rajeev Rajan, vice president for IoT at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"]. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE:... » read more

Executive Insight: Jack Harding


[getperson id="11145" comment="Jack Harding"], president and CEO of [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about consolidation, business relationships, what it will take to survive in the IoT age, and how to better optimize chips. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: We’ve been looking at consolidation for a while and all th... » read more

New Drivers For Test


Mention Design for Test (DFT) and scan chains come to mind, but there is much more to it than that—and the rules of the game are changing. New application areas such as automotive may breathe new life into built-in self-test (BIST) solutions, which could also be used for manufacturing test. So could DFT as we know it be a thing of the past? Or will it continue to have a role to play? Te... » read more

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