Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

By Karen Heyman - 29 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 1

The U.S. Congress approved the CHIPS Act, a mammoth bipartisan achievement the New York Times called “the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades.” As passed, the full package — now called the Chips and Science Act — contains $52 billion in direct assistance for the semiconductor industry, along with $24 billion in tax incentives. In addition, the bill c... » read more

Customizing Processors

By Brian Bailey - 28 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 1

The design, verification, and implementation of a processor is the core competence of some companies, but others just want to whip up a small processor as quickly and cheaply as possible. What tools and options exist? Processors range from very small, simple cores that are deeply embedded into products to those operating at the highest possible clock speeds and throughputs in data centers. I... » read more

Hybrid Bonding Moves Into The Fast Lane

By Laura Peters - 21 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 1

The industry’s unquenchable thirst for I/O density and faster connections between chips, particularly logic and cache memory, is transforming system designs to include 3D architectures, and hybrid bonding has become an essential component in that equation. Hybrid bonding involves die-to-wafer or wafer-to-wafer connection of copper pads that carry power and signals and the surrounding diele... » read more

New Materials Open Door To New Devices

By Katherine Derbyshire - 21 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

Integrating 2D materials into conventional semiconductor manufacturing processes may be one of the more radical changes in the chip industry’s history. While there is pain and suffering associated with the introduction of any new materials in semiconductor manufacturing, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) support a variety of new device concepts, including BEOL transistors and single-... » read more

Customization, Heterogenous Integration, And Brute Force Verification

By Ed Sperling - 14 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss why new approaches are required for heterogeneous designs, with Bari Biswas, senior vice president for the Silicon Realization Group at Synopsys; John Lee, general manager and vice president of the Ansys Semiconductor business unit; Michael Jackson, corporate vice president for R&D at Cadence; Prashant Varshney, head of product for Microsoft Azu... » read more

RETBLEED: New Spectre-BTI Attack (ETH Zurich)

By Technical Paper Link - 13 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

New Spectre-BTI attack that "leaks arbitrary kernel memory." It's detailed in this research paper titled “RETBLEED: Arbitrary Speculative Code Execution with Return Instructions” from researchers at ETH Zürich. Mitigations are available. Abstract "Modern operating systems rely on software defenses against hardware attacks. These defenses are, however, as good as the assumptions they m... » read more

Week In Review, Manufacturing, Test

By Susan Rambo - 08 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

The U.S. is attempting to restrict sales of ASML’s deep ultra-violet (DUV) litho systems to China, according to a report from Bloomberg. The U.S. has been working to limit China's access to advanced technology for some time, and it has already limited sales of extreme ultra-violet (EUV), which is used to develop chips at the most advanced process nodes. DUV, in contrast, is used for older-nod... » read more

Security Risks Widen With Commercial Chiplets

By Ed Sperling - 07 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

The commercialization of chiplets is expected to increase the number and breadth of attack surfaces in electronic systems, making it harder to keep track of all the hardened IP jammed into a package and to verify its authenticity and robustness against hackers. Until now this has been largely a non-issue, because the only companies using chiplets today — AMD, Intel, and Marvell — interna... » read more

What Formula 1 Racing Says About Auto’s High-Tech Future

By Marie C. Baca - 07 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

To learn about the future of the auto industry, you can interview analysts and experts, peruse scientific publications, and attend various conferences. Or you can watch multi-million dollar race cars hurtle around a track at speeds of upwards of 220 miles per hour. Welcome to Formula 1, the international auto racing sport with a cumulative TV audience of 1.55 billion people. The budgets are ... » read more

Hertzbleed: A New Family of Side-Channel Attacks–Root Case: Dynamic Frequency Scaling

By Technical Paper Link - 01 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

New research paper titled "Hertzbleed: Turning Power Side-Channel Attacks Into Remote Timing Attacks on x86" from researchers at UT Austin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and University of Washington can be found here. (preprint). This paper will be presented at the 31st USENIX Security Symposium (Boston, 10–12 August 2022). Summary explanation of the Hertzbleed ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer

New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency

Hot Chips 24: Large language models ratchet up pressure for sustainable computing and heterogeneous integration; data management becomes key differentiator.