Improving Performance And Power With HBM3


HBM3 swings open the door to significantly faster data movement between memory and processors, reducing the power it takes to send and receive signals and boosting the performance of systems where high data throughput is required. But using this memory is expensive and complicated, and that likely will continue to be the case in the short term. High Bandwidth Memory 3 (HBM3) is the most rece... » read more

CXL Picks Up Steam In Data Centers


CXL is gaining traction inside large data centers as a way of boosting utilization of different compute elements, such as memories and accelerators, while minimizing the need for additional racks of servers. But the standard is being extended and modified so quickly that it is difficult to keep up with all the changes, each of which needs to be verified and validated across a growing swath of h... » read more

Supply Chain Collaboration Key To Making Chip Industry More Sustainable


Coming in the wake of the COP27, the Smart and Green Manufacturing Summit at SEMICON Europa 2022 (Munich, 15-17 November) had a timely focus on the semiconductor industry’s contribution to meeting the United Nations’ target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. However, in an industry as large and valuable as semiconductors, social as well as environmental imp... » read more

The Path To Known Good Interconnects


Chiplets and heterogenous integration (HI) provide a compelling way to continue delivering improvements in performance, power, area, and cost (PPAC) as Moore’s Law slows, but choosing the best way to connect these devices so they behave in consistent and predictable ways is becoming a challenge as the number of options continues to grow. More possibilities also bring more potential interac... » read more

Selecting The Right RISC-V Core


With an increasing number of companies interested in devices based on the RISC-V ISA, and a growing number of cores, accelerators, and infrastructure components being made available, either commercially or in open-source form, end users face an increasingly difficult challenge of ensuring they make the best choices. Each user likely will have a set of needs and concerns that almost equals th... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Global semiconductor sales hit $45.5 billion during the month of November 2022, according to SIA’s January announcement. Year-over-year sales increased in November in the Americas (5.2%), Europe (4.5%), and Japan (1.2%), but decreased in Asia Pacific/rest of world (-13.9%) and China (-21.2%). Month-to-month sales were down across all regions. The United States, Mexico and Canada vowed to... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


With funding from the Semiconductor Research Corporation, a group of 10 universities is banding together to create the Processing with Intelligent Storage and Memory center, or PRISM, led by University of California San Diego. The $50.5 million PRISM center will focus on four different themes: novel memory and storage devices and circuits; next generation architectures; systems and software; an... » read more

Will Floating Point 8 Solve AI/ML Overhead?


While the media buzzes about the Turing Test-busting results of ChatGPT, engineers are focused on the hardware challenges of running large language models and other deep learning networks. High on the ML punch list is how to run models more efficiently using less power, especially in critical applications like self-driving vehicles where latency becomes a matter of life or death. AI already ... » read more

Screening For Silent Data Errors


Engineers are beginning to understand the causes of silent data errors (SDEs) and the data center failures they cause, both of which can be reduced by increasing test coverage and boosting inspection on critical layers. Silent data errors are so named because if engineers don’t look for them, then they don’t know they exist. Unlike other kinds of faulty behaviors, these errors also can c... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


TSMC is in advanced talks with key suppliers about setting up its first potential European plant in Dresden, Germany, according to Nikkei Asia. The company held a 3nm volume production and capacity expansion ceremony at its Fab 18. TSMC also is building 3nm capacity at its Arizona site, as well as opening a global R&D Center in the Hsinchu Science Park in the second quarter of 2023, to be ... » read more

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