Thermal Impact On Reliability At 7/5nm


Haroon Chaudhri, director of RedHawk Analysis Fusion at Synopsys, talks about why thermal analysis is shifting left in the design cycle and why this is so critical at the most advanced process nodes. https://youtu.be/wjkrEFLb2vY » read more

The Quest For Perfection


Demands by automakers for zero defects over 15 years are absurd, particularly when it comes to 10/7nm AI systems that will be the brains of autonomous and assisted driving or any mobile electronic device. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, no one has ever used a 10/7nm device under extreme conditions for any length of time. Chips developed at these nodes are just starting to ... » read more

IIoT Edge Is A Moving Target


Edge computing happens in an industrial IoT (IIoT) system wherever it needs to happen. The business needs for an IIoT system—or one layer of that system—will determine when and where the computing happens. This conclusion, from an introductory report written by the IoT testing organization the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), helps explain why no one consistently can say what edge... » read more

Hardware Security Threat Rising


Martin Scott, senior vice president and CTO of Rambus, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about an increasing problem with security, what's driving it, and why hardware is now part of the growing attack surface. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: With Meltdown and Spectre, the stakes have changed because the focus is not on using hardware to get to software. It'... » read more

Emulation-Driven Implementation


Tech Talk: Haroon Chaudhri, director of Prime Power at Synopsys, talks about how to shorten time to market and increase confidence in advanced-node designs, while also reducing the amount of guard-banding and improving design freedom. https://youtu.be/xT3CIqjnaBk » read more

The Growing Materials Challenge


By Katherine Derbyshire & Ed Sperling Materials have emerged as a growing challenge across the semiconductor supply chain, as chips continue to scale, or as they are utilized in new devices such as sensors for AI or machine learning systems. Engineered materials are no longer optional at advanced nodes. They are now a requirement, and the amount of new material content in chips contin... » read more

FPGAs Becoming More SoC-Like


FPGAs are blinged-out rockstars compared to their former selves. No longer just a collection of look-up tables (LUTs) and registers, FPGAs have moved well beyond into now being architectures for system exploration and vehicles for proving a design architecture for future ASICs. This family of devices now includes everything from basic programmable logic all the way up to complex SoC devices.... » read more

Ensuring Chip Reliability From The Inside


Monitoring activity and traffic is emerging as an essential ingredient in complex, heterogeneous chips used in automotive, industrial, and data center applications. This is particularly true in safety-critical applications such as automotive, where much depends on the system operating exactly right at all times. To make autonomous and assisted driving possible, a mechanism to ensure systems ... » read more

Why All Nodes Won’t Work


A flood of new nodes, half-nodes and every number in between is creating confusion among chipmakers. While most say it's good to have choices, it's not clear which or how many of those choices are actually good. At issue is which [getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"] will be available for those nodes, how that IP will differ from other nodes in terms of power, performance, area and sensitivity to a v... » read more

Custom Vs. Non-Custom Design


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss custom designs with Yong Pang, head of North American operations for [getentity id="22217" e_name="Imec"]; Phil Burr, director of portfolio product management for [getentity id="22186" e_name="Arm's"] embedded and automotive groups; Ambar Sarkar, chief technologist at eInfochips; and John Tinson, vice president of sales at Sondrel. What follows are ... » read more

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