tag: IBM

What Will Replace Dual Damascene?
By Mark LaPedus - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus In the mid-1990s, IBM announced the world’s first devices using a copper dual damascene process. At the time, the dual damascene manufacturing process was hailed as a major breakthrough. The new copper process enabled IC makers to scale the tiny interconnects in a device, as the previous material, aluminum, faced some major limitations. Dual damascene remains the workhorse... » read more

Lessons From Past Architecture Wars
By Marc David Levenson - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Marc David Levenson There was an interesting IEEE panel discussion in Silicon Valley recently, reviewing the microprocessor architecture wars of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. How did the Intel x86 architecture become so dominant when there were other capable designs, including more efficient RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) chips? How did the x86s overcome competition from Zilog, M... » read more

Tradeoffs On The Fly
By Ed Sperling - 17 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler With classical bulk planar technology no longer shrinkable, the industry has been honing in on new ways to continue some scaling, achieve extra speed or better power while minimizing leakage. “To overcome the limits [of bulk planar technology] we need a different solution,” explained Giorgio Cesano, technology R&D marketing director at STMicroelectron... » read more

Shaking Up The Green500
By Barry Pangrle - 17 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

Barry Pangrle Last September, I wrote about the efficiency of IBM’s Power7+ architecture in my blog. IBM’s Sequoia supercomputer (a BlueGene/Q system) this past June had just shot to the top of the Supercomputing Top500 chart, clocking in at 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark. Other systems built around the IBM BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz, Custom were also dominating the top o... » read more

Foundry Landscape Changes In 3D
By Mark LaPedus - 13 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus Over the last year, leading-edge silicon foundries announced their new and respective strategies in the emerging 2.5D/3D chip arena. The ink is barely dry and now the foundry landscape is changing. One new vendor, Tezzaron Semiconductor, is entering the market. The 3D DRAM supplier plans to provide select 2.5D/3D foundry services within its recently acquired fab in Austin, T... » read more

Upping The Ante
By Ed Sperling - 13 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

The increasing number of research projects under way to solve many of the thorniest issues in the history of semiconductor design and manufacturing are a testament to just how tough the job has become. Never before have there been so many technological roadblocks at the same time—and so many potential options for solving them. Those challenges—or opportunities, as marketing execs like to... » read more

Shades Of Gray
By Ed Sperling - 06 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

As more things talk to other things, and as we begin accumulating more devices that can communicate with other devices, one key question will begin surfacing in the power/performance arena—are we really better off than we were before? This is a deceptively simple, open-ended question with some very complex answers. But it’s also essential that we provide enough answers to satisfy critics... » read more

Don’t miss Fully-Depleted Tech Symposium during IEDM (SF)
By Various Writers - 04 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ If you want to cut through the noise surrounding the choices for 28nm and beyond, an excellent place to start is the SOI Consortium’s Fully Depleted Technology Symposium. As a member of the design and manufacturing communities, this is your chance to see and hear what industry leaders are actually doing. Planar? F... » read more

How To Make A Brain-On-A-Chip
By Mark LaPedus - 15 Nov, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus In October, Draper Laboratory and the University of South Florida (USF) disclosed an ambitious plan to develop a brain-on-a-chip. The idea is to devise a “micro-environment’’ that mimics the human brain. Researchers hope to study neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, strokes and concussions. The eventual goal is to study the effects of drugs and v... » read more

Facing Up To RC Delay
By Ed Sperling - 15 Nov, 2012 - Comments: 0

y Ed Sperling Resistance and capacitance delays have always been someone else’s problem to solve at some fuzzy process node in the future, and for the most part manufacturers and equipment makers have done a wizard-like job of making this problem go away. They can’t make it disappear anymore, though, and beginning at 14nm and beyond RC delay is becoming more than just an annoyance. The ... » read more

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