System Bits: Jan. 3


Clues to high-temp superconductivity Offering clues about the microscopic origins of high-temperature superconductivity, physicists at Rice University’s Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM) have created a new iron-based material. The material is a formulation of iron, sodium, copper and arsenic created by Rice graduate student Yu Song in the laboratory of physicist Pengcheng Dai. The recip... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 20


Stamping with electronic ink Engineers at MIT fabricated a stamp made from carbon nanotubes that is able to print electronic inks onto rigid and flexible surfaces. The team's stamping process should be able to print transistors small enough to control individual pixels in high-resolution displays and touchscreens, said A. John Hart, associate professor of contemporary technology and mecha... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 20


Energy-harvesting fabric Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Chongqing University in China developed a fabric that can simultaneously harvest energy from both sunshine and motion. The fabric, just .32mm thick, was constructed using a commercial textile machine to weave together solar cells constructed from lightweight polymer fibers with fiber-based triboelectric nanoge... » read more

What’s Missing From Machine Learning


Machine learning is everywhere. It's being used to optimize complex chips, balance power and performance inside of data centers, program robots, and to keep expensive electronics updated and operating. What's less obvious, though, is there are no commercially available tools to validate, verify and debug these systems once machines evolve beyond the final specification. The expectation is th... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 9


Faster FEBIDs Focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) is generating steam in the industry. Still in the R&D stage, FEBID makes use of an electron beam from a scanning electron microscope. Basically, it decomposes gaseous molecules, which, in turn, deposit materials and structures on a surface at the nanoscale. One of the big applications is a futuristic manufacturing technology... » read more

Rethinking Processor Architectures


The semiconductor industry's obsession with clock speeds, cores and how many transistors fit on a piece of silicon may be nearing an end for real this time. The [getentity id="22048" comment="IEEE"] said it will develop the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS), effectively setting the industry agenda for future silicon benchmarking and adding metrics that are relevant to specifi... » read more

7nm Fab Challenges


Leading-edge foundry vendors have made the challenging transition from traditional planar processes into the finFET transistor era. The first [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFETs"] were based on the 22nm node, and now the industry is ramping up 16nm/14nm technologies. Going forward, the question is how far the finFET can be scaled. In fact, 10nm finFETs from Samsung are expected to ramp by ye... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 23


World’s smallest inkjet image ETH Zurich and Scrona have set the official world’s record for the smallest inkjet-printed color image. The feat, which has been recognized by the Guinness World Records, is based on Scrona’s so-called NanoDrip printing technology and quantum dots. ETH and Scrona printed an image of clown fishes and sea anemones. The printed image measures 0.0092mm² in a... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 13


Cooling down FPGAs Georgia Institute of Technology researchers found a way to put liquid cooling a few hundred microns away from where the transistors are operating by cutting microfluidic passages directly into the backsides of production FPGAs. The research, backed by DARPA, is believed to be the first example of liquid cooling directly on an operating high-performance CMOS chip. To ... » read more

Energy Harvesting Update


Manos Tentzeris, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss energy harvesting. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What is the state of energy harvesting and are we making progress. Tentzeris: The latest results are systems with efficiency up to 40% to 45% utilizing ambient UH... » read more

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