Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 7


Logic-in-memory with MoS2 Engineers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) built a logic-in-memory device using molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) as the channel material. MoS2 is a three-atom-thick 2D material and excellent semiconductor. The new chip is based on floating-gate field-effect transistors (FGFETs) that can hold electric charges for long periods. MoS2 is particularly se... » read more

Challenges At 3/2nm


David Fried, vice president of computational products at Lam Research, talks about issues at upcoming process nodes, the move to EUV lithography and nanosheet transistors, and how process variation can affect yield and device performance. » read more

Memory Access In AI Systems


Memory access is a key consideration in AI system design. Ron Lowman, strategic marketing manager for IP at Synopsys, talks about how memory affects overall power consumption, why partitioning of on-chip and off-chip is so critical to performance and power, and how this changes from the cloud to the edge. » read more

Scaling Up Compute-In-Memory Accelerators


Researchers are zeroing in on new architectures to boost performance by limiting the movement of data in a device, but this is proving to be much harder than it appears. The argument for memory-based computation is familiar by now. Many important computational workloads involve repetitive operations on large datasets. Moving data from memory to the processing unit and back — the so-called ... » read more

What Engineers Are Reading And Watching


By Brian Bailey And Ed Sperling An important indicator of where the chip industry is heading is what engineers are reading and what videos they are watching. While some subjects remain on top, such as the level of interest in the latest manufacturing technologies, other areas come and go. The stories with the biggest traffic numbers are almost identical to last year. Readers want to know wh... » read more

The Next New Memories


Several next-generation memory types are ramping up after years of R&D, but there are still more new memories in the research pipeline. Today, several next-generation memories, such as MRAM, phase-change memory (PCM) and ReRAM, are shipping to one degree or another. Some of the next new memories are extensions of these technologies. Others are based on entirely new technologies or involve ar... » read more

Will In-Memory Processing Work?


The cost associated with moving data in and out of memory is becoming prohibitive, both in terms of performance and power, and it is being made worse by the data locality in algorithms, which limits the effectiveness of cache. The result is the first serious assault on the von Neumann architecture, which for a computer was simple, scalable and modular. It separated the notion of a computatio... » read more

Enabling Practical Processing in and near Memory for Data-Intensive Computing


Source: ETH Zurich and Carnegie Mellon University Talk at DAC 2019. Technical Paper link » read more

Power, Reliability And Security In Packaging


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced packaging with Ajay Lalwani, vice president of global manufacturing operations at eSilicon; Vic Kulkarni, vice president and chief strategist in the office of the CTO at ANSYS; Calvin Cheung, vice president of engineering at ASE; Walter Ng, vice president of business management at UMC; and Tien Shiah, senior manager for memory at Samsun... » read more

HBM2 Vs. GDDR6: Tradeoffs In DRAM


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about new DRAM options and considerations with Frank Ferro, senior director of product management at Rambus; Marc Greenberg, group director for product marketing at Cadence; Graham Allan, senior product marketing manager for DDR PHYs at Synopsys; and Tien Shiah, senior manager for memory marketing at Samsung Electronics. What follows are excerpts of th... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →