Week In Review: Design, Low Power

By Jesse Allen - 13 Dec, 2019 - Comments: 0

Rambus finalized its acquisition of the silicon IP, secure protocols and provisioning business from Verimatrix, formerly Inside Secure, for $45 million at closing, and up to an additional $20 million, subject to certain revenue targets in 2020. RISC-V SiFive unveiled two new product families. The SiFive Apex processor cores target mission-critical processors with Size, Weight, and Power (SW... » read more

Week In Review: IoT, Security, Autos

By Susan Rambo - 29 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Internet of Things Amazon is expanding its IoT services. Alexa Voice Services will require less processing power on the device, moving from the 100MB of RAM and Arm Cortex A microprocessor to 1MB and an Arm Cortex-M. Amazon will do more of the processing in the cloud, enabling developers to add Alexa to smaller, single purpose devices. “It just opens up the what we call the real ambient inte... » read more

Inspection, Metrology Challenges Grow For SiC

By Mark LaPedus - 11 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 2

Inspection and metrology are becoming more critical in the silicon carbide (SiC) industry amid a pressing need to find problematic defects in current and future SiC devices. Finding defects always has been a challenging task for SiC devices. But it’s becoming more imperative to find killer defects and reduce them as SiC device vendors begin to expand their production for the next wave of a... » read more

SiC Demand Growing Faster Than Supply

By Mark LaPedus - 23 May, 2019 - Comments: 2

The silicon carbide (SiC) industry is in the midst of a major expansion campaign, but suppliers are struggling to meet potential demand for SiC power devices and wafers in the market. In just one example of the expansion efforts, Cree plans to invest up to $1 billion to increase its SiC fab and wafer capacities. As part of the plan, Cree is developing the world’s first 200mm (8-inch) SiC f... » read more

Building Security Into RISC-V Systems

By Ed Sperling - 30 Jan, 2019 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Helena Handschuh, a Rambus fellow; Richard Newell, senior principal product architect at Microsemi, a Microchip Company; and Joseph Kiniry, principal scientist at Galois. Part one is here. (This is the second of two parts.) L-R: Joseph Kiniry, Helena Handschuh, Richard Newell. SE: Some of the new applications for hardware designs are tied to AI, d... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

By Mark LaPedus - 04 Jan, 2019 - Comments: 0

OEMs and chipmakers Apple has reduced its revenue outlook to $84 billion for the quarter, down from $89 billion to $93 billion in its original forecast. The consensus on Wall Street was $91 billion. “The guide down was mostly attributed to weaker-than-expected iPhone demand in emerging markets, predominantly China,” said John Vinh, an analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets, in a research not... » read more

Open-Source RISC-V Hardware And Security

By Ed Sperling - 12 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Helena Handschuh, a Rambus fellow; Richard Newell, senior principal product architect at Microsemi, a Microchip Company; and Joseph Kiniry, principal scientist at Galois. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. (L-R) Joseph Kiniry, Helena Handschuh and Richard Newell. SE: Is open-source hardware more secure, or does it just open up vulnera... » read more

Virtual Design Chains At The EDA Forum

By Frank Schirrmeister - 29 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

The German edacentrum’s EDA Forum was held in Berlin, Germany, in early November. It was very interesting to see the design chain effects in the automotive domain, very visible in a panel yours truly was part of, together with Audi, Bosch, Infineon, MicroChip, Synopsys, Mentor, and the BMBF. Driven from the top of the design chain, the direction is clearly to go more virtual to optimize the c... » read more

Looking Beyond The CPU

By Brian Bailey - 29 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

CPUs no longer deliver the same kind of of performance improvements as in the past, raising questions across the industry about what comes next. The growth in processing power delivered by a single CPU core began stalling out at the beginning of the decade, when power-related issues such as heat and noise forced processor companies to add more cores rather than pushing up the clock frequency... » read more

Foundries Prepare For Battle At 22nm

By Mark LaPedus - 19 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

After introducing new 22nm processes over the last year or two, foundries are gearing up the technology for production—and preparing for a showdown. GlobalFoundries, Intel, TSMC and UMC are developing and/or expanding their efforts at 22nm amid signs this node could generate substantial business for applications like automotive, IoT and wireless. But foundry customers face some tough choic... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

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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.

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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

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by Laura Peters

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?

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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.

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