Shaking Up The Green500


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 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


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


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)


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 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


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

New Incentives For Lowering Power


By Ed Sperling Despite all the focus by design teams on lowering power over the past few years, in many applications power is still the last consideration for many companies in the power-performance-area equation. That’s beginning to change, however, even for applications that in the past have not been particularly power-sensitive. There are several reasons for this shift. No. 1 on the li... » read more

Cellular Stranglehold?


Do you ever feel like you are completely at the mercy of your cellular service provider? Yeah, me too. Not only did I have to change providers when I relocated, I had to buy a new phone of course. Since my old phone and my new phone were both iPhones, I thought for sure I could use the same car charger….but no dice. This fact has bothered me for quite some time because it made no sense to ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Issues In Lithography


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future lithography challenges with Juan Rey, senior director of engineering at Mentor Graphics; Aki Fujimura, chairman and chief executive at D2S; and Tatsuo Enami, general manager for the sales division at Gigaphoton. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. (Part one can be found here.) SMD: Let’s re-vi... » read more

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