Racing To Design Chips Faster


A shift is underway to develop chips for more narrowly defined market segments, and in much smaller production runs. Rather than focusing on shrinking features and reducing cost per transistor by the billions of units, the emphasis behind this shift is less about scale and much more about optimization for specific markets and delivering those solutions more quickly. As automotive, consumer e... » read more

Can You Really Fry an Egg on a CPU?


Solving complex thermal models with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) requires a lot of processing power, and a central processing unit (CPU) under full load generates a fair amount of heat. But can you cook an egg on it? Search online and you can find videos of people attempting to cook on their processors—I wouldn’t recommend this as a cooling solution. However, just out of curiosity, I ... » read more

What’s Next For DRAM?


The DRAM business has always been challenging. Over the years, DRAM suppliers have experienced a number of boom and bust cycles in a competitive landscape. But now, the industry faces a cloudy, if not an uncertain, future. On one front, for example, [getkc id="93" kc_name="DRAM"] vendors face a downturn amid a capacity glut and falling product prices in 2016. But despite the business chal... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


The SPIE Advanced Lithography conference is next week. “The conference should provide an update on extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) sentiment from chipmakers such as Intel and TSMC, and we expect generally positive sentiment, which should be good for ASML. Still, high-volume adoption timing of EUV appears to be in the 2020 time frame, so it's very early in the process. We expect a lot of... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Know someone who deserves the Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to EDA? Nominations are open until June 30th. Tools, IP & Chips ARM debuted the Cortex-R8 processor, targeting mass storage devices and future 5G modems with a quad-core configuration and extended low-latency memory. Cadence's schematic design tool, OrCAD Capture, added the capability to export hierarc... » read more

The Big Shift


The number of chipmakers that truly can differentiate their products by moving to the next process node is falling, and that pool will continue to shrink even further over the next few years. Processor companies such as Intel and IBM always will benefit from scaling and architectural changes. So will GPU companies such as Nvidia, and FPGA vendors such as Xilinx, Microsemi and Altera (now par... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) and GlobalFoundries announced the establishment of a new Advanced Patterning and Productivity Center (APPC). The $500 million, 5-year program will accelerate the introduction of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technologies into manufacturing. The center is located at the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) in Albany, N.Y. -------... » read more

Will 3D-IC Work?


Advanced packaging is becoming real on every level, from fan-outs to advanced fan-outs, 2.5D, and 3D-ICs for memory. But just how far 3D and monolithic 3D will go isn't clear at this point. The reason is almost entirely due to heat. In a speech at SEMI's Integrated Strategy Symposium in January, Babek Sabi, Intel corporate VP and director of assembly and test technology development, warned t... » read more

Thermal Damage To Chips Widens


Heat is becoming a much bigger problem for semiconductor and system design, fueled by higher density and the increasing use of complex chips in markets such as automotive, where reliability is measured in decade-long increments. In the past, heat typically was handled by mechanical engineers, who figured out where to put heat sinks, fans, or holes to funnel heat out of a chassis. But as more... » read more

What Is Cyberwarfare?


Cyberwarfare is emerging as the most sophisticated battleground of the 21st century. In fact, the military in all major countries make it a priority. Collectively they are spending tens of billions of dollars on education and building a knowledgebase of how attacks can be perpetrated and what defenses are needed. The entire effort is based on technology, both legacy and new, starting on the ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →