How To Compare Chips

By Ed Sperling - 15 Sep, 2022 - Comments: 0

Traditional metrics for semiconductors are becoming much less meaningful in the most advanced designs. The number of transistors packed into a square centimeter only matters if they can be utilized, and performance per watt is irrelevant if sufficient power cannot be delivered to all of the transistors. The consensus across the chip industry is that the cost per transistor is rising at each ... » read more

Keyword Transformer: A Self-Attention Model For Keyword Spotting

By Arm - 12 Sep, 2022 - Comments: 0

The Transformer architecture has been successful across many domains, including natural language processing, computer vision and speech recognition. In keyword spotting, self-attention has primarily been used on top of convolutional or recurrent encoders. We investigate a range of ways to adapt the Transformer architecture to keyword spotting and introduce the Keyword Transformer (KWT), a fully... » read more

Security Verification Of An Open-Source Hardware Root Of Trust

By Jason Oberg - 01 Sep, 2022 - Comments: 0

By Jason Oberg and Dominic Rizzo OpenTitan is a powerful open-source silicon root of trust project, designed from scratch as a transparent, trustworthy, and secure implementation for enterprises, platform providers, and chip manufacturers. It includes numerous hardware security features ranging from secure boot and remote attestation to secure storage of private user data. The open-source de... » read more

MicroLEDs Move Toward Commercialization

By Laura Peters - 29 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 1

The market for MicroLED displays is heating up, fueled by a raft of innovations in design and manufacturing that can increase yield and reduce prices, making them competitive with LCD and OLED devices. MicroLED displays are brighter and higher contrast than their predecessors, and they are more efficient. Functional prototypes have been developed for watches, AR glasses, TVs, signage, and au... » read more

Technical Paper Round-Up: Aug 23

By Linda Christensen - 23 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=46 /] Semiconductor Engineering is in the process of building this library of research papers. Please send suggestions (via comments section below) for what else you’d like us to incorporate. If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a good fit for... » read more

Polynesia, A Novel Hardware/Software Cooperative Design for In-Memory HTAP Databases

By Technical Paper Link - 22 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

A team of researchers from ETH Zurich, Google and Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently published a technical paper titled "Polynesia: Enabling High-Performance and Energy-Efficient Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Databases with Hardware/Software Co-Design". Abstract (partial) "We propose Polynesia, a hardware–software co-designed system for in-memory HTAP [hybrid transactional/anal... » read more

Chipmakers Model AI For Radio Access Networks

By Martha DeGrasse - 22 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

The chips that power and connect smartphones are now foundational to a disparate portfolio of daily tasks we take for granted, from accessing the internet to snapping a photo or asking Siri or Google if rain is in the forecast. Most people don’t think twice about the conflicting demands these tasks can place on semiconductors, but for engineers at leading chip manufacturers, this balancing ac... » read more

Security Research: Technical Paper Round-Up

By Linda Christensen - 16 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

A number of hardware security-related technical papers were presented at recent conferences, including the August 2022 USENIX Security Symposium and IEEE’s International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST). Topics include side-channel attacks and defenses (including on-chip mesh interconnect attacks), heterogeneous attacks on cache hierarchies, rowhammer attacks and mitig... » read more

An Escalation of Rowhammer To Rows Beyond Immediate Neighbors

By Technical Paper Link - 15 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

Researchers at Graz University of Technology, Lamarr Security Research, Google, AWS, and Rivos presented this new technical paper titled "Half-Double: Hammering From the Next Row Over" at the USENIX Security Symposium in Boston in August 2022. Abstract: "Rowhammer is a vulnerability in modern DRAM where repeated accesses to one row (the aggressor) give off electrical disturbance whose cumu... » read more

New Uses For AI In Chips

By John Koon and Ed Sperling - 11 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 1

Artificial intelligence is being deployed across a number of new applications, from improving performance and reducing power in a wide range of end devices to spotting irregularities in data movement for security reasons. While most people are familiar with using machine learning and deep learning to distinguish between cats and dogs, emerging applications show how this capability can be use... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer

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