Progress In Quantum Computing


A recent wave of quantum computing investment has given rise to claims of a quantum computing bubble, based on overly optimistic technological claims in a field area that experts say has yet to demonstrate any real utility. But executives on the industry’s front lines say quantum computing is indeed a commercially viable technology, albeit one that is at least several years away from overcomi... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


President Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 15, limiting foreign investments in U.S. technology by "competitor or adversarial nations" that are deemed a threat to national security. In the past, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) largely limited its actions to the sale of U.S. companies. The new directive expands that to include investments involving "U.S. s... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Cadence unveiled a big data analytics infrastructure to unify massive data sets across all Cadence computational software. The Joint Enterprise Data and AI (JedAI) Platform aims to optimize multiple runs of multiple engines across an entire SoC design and verification flow. It combines data from its AI-driven Cerebrus implementation and Optimality system optimization solutions, along with the n... » read more

How To Compare Chips


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


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 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


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


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


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


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

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