IC Architectures Shift As OEMs Narrow Their Focus


Diminishing returns from process scaling, coupled with pervasive connectedness and an exponential increase in data, are driving broad changes in how chips are designed, what they're expected to do, and how quickly they're supposed to do it. In the past, tradeoffs between performance, power, and cost were defined mostly by large OEMs within the confines of an industry-wide scaling roadmap. Ch... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Highlights from ITC The hot topic at this week’s International Test Conference (ITC) was tackling silent data corruption, with panel discussions, papers, and Google’s Parthasarathy Ranganathan’s keynote address all emphasizing the urgency of the issue. In the past two years Meta, Google, and Microsoft have reported on silent errors, errors not detected at test, which are adversely impact... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 28


Cadence's Paul McLellan shares more highlights from the recent Hot Chips, including some very large chips and accelerators for AI and deep learning, new networks and switches, and mobile and edge processors. Synopsys' Marc Serughetti considers the different use cases for digital twins in automotive and how they can help determine the impact of software on verification, test, and validation a... » read more

Technical Paper Roundup: Sept 27


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=53 /] Semiconductor Engineering is in the process of building this library of research papers. Please send suggestions (via comments section below) for what else you’d like us to incorporate. If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a good fit f... » read more

Strengthening The Global Semi Supply Chain


Within the semiconductor ecosystem, there are a number of dynamics pointing to the need for new ways of partnering in more meaningful ways that bring resiliency to the global semiconductor supply chain. One of these is the move to bespoke silicon, stemming from a shift in the companies that create most SoCs today -- the hyperscalar cloud providers. These market leaders know their workloads so w... » read more

Progress In Quantum Computing


A recent wave of quantum computing investment has given rise to claims of a quantum computing bubble, based on overly optimistic technological claims in a field area that experts say has yet to demonstrate any real utility. But executives on the industry’s front lines say quantum computing is indeed a commercially viable technology, albeit one that is at least several years away from overcomi... » read more

Collaboration Leading The Way For Broad RISC-V Adoption


We recently announced a partnership with Intel as part of the launch of the Intel Pathfinder for RISC-V, making leading RISC-V technology more accessible for prototyping, production design or research purposes using Intel FPGAs. Intel Pathfinder for RISC-V allows for a variety of RISC-V cores and other IP to be instantiated on FPGA platforms, with the ability to run industry-leading oper... » read more

How Memory Design Optimizes System Performance


Exponential increases in data and demand for improved performance to process that data has spawned a variety of new approaches to processor design and packaging, but it also is driving big changes on the memory side. While the underlying technology still looks very familiar, the real shift is in the way those memories are connected to processing elements and various components within a syste... » read more

FP8: Cross-Industry Hardware Specification For AI Training And Inference (Arm, Intel, Nvidia)


Arm, Intel, and Nvidia proposed a specification for an 8-bit floating point (FP8) format that could provide a common interchangeable format that works for both AI training and inference and allow AI models to operate and perform consistently across hardware platforms. Find the technical paper titled " FP8 Formats For Deep Learning" here. Published Sept 2022. Abstract: "FP8 is a natural p... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


President Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 15, limiting foreign investments in U.S. technology by "competitor or adversarial nations" that are deemed a threat to national security. In the past, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) largely limited its actions to the sale of U.S. companies. The new directive expands that to include investments involving "U.S. s... » read more

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