Executive Insight: Aart de Geus


SE: What worries you most? De Geus: Everything I do is with high intensity, and what is of super high intensity right now—and there are challenges and opportunities in it—is that we have the confluence of some very big changes right now happening at the same time. On the technology side, there are multiple intersections. One is the intersection of another 10 years of Moore’s Law—finF... » read more

Executive Insight: Hossein Yassaie


SE: What concerns you looking out at the semiconductor industry? Yassaie: There are big changes in the industry over the last two years, such as the verticalization in the mobile space. Every semiconductor company wanted to play in mobile. It was just a fact of life that some of these guys would give up. That was a major change, and it was something we could see coming. Our focus is diverse ... » read more

Tech Talk: The New Cost Per Gate Equation


eSilicon's Javier DeLaCruz talks with Semiconductor Engineering about new types of interposers, why just shrinking features is doomed, and what progress has been made in building 2.5D chips. [youtube vid=akj8r8nNktM] » read more

EDA Races To 7nm, Despite Litho Uncertainties


It’s becoming almost painful to refer to the delay with EUV, but it certainly isn’t stopping anyone on the design side from tweaking design tools or working on test chips. Clearly, things are moving ahead to 7nm even though lithography plans aren't yet clear. Steve Carlson, group marketing director in Cadence’s Office of Chief Strategy, said with regard to EUV, “They have the power p... » read more

Beyond Moore’s Law


What do you make of all the different reports coming out of Advanced Lithography 2014 — the end of Moore's Law, continued problems with EUV, directed self-assembly assembly makes progress? An equipment insider, whose judgment I value, came back from the meeting and concluded, "We will see the end of Moore’s Law shrinks in 2020. After that, no one knows!” There is no way a $300B+ business ... » read more

What Are EDA’s Big Three Thinking?


Over the past six weeks, the CEOs of Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics—in that order—have delivered top-down visionary messages to their user groups. Semiconductor Engineering had the opportunity to attend all three sessions, and has compiled comments from each on a variety of subjects. In some cases, all the CEOs were in sync. In others, they were not. In still others, it was difficult... » read more

Favorite Forecast Fallacies


It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. – An Old Danish Proverb. The GSA Silicon Summit was held on Thursday, April 10th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. The opening panel session was entitled Advancements in Nanoscale Processing. The panelists were Rob Aitken (ARM), Adam Brand (Applied Materials), Peter Huang (TSMC), Nick Kepler (VLSI Researc... » read more

EUV Reaches A Crossroads


[gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"] (EUV) [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"] is at a crossroads. 2014 represents a critical year for the technology. In fact, it may answer a pressing question about EUV: Does it work or not? It’s too early to make that determination right now, but there are more uncertainties than ever for the oft-delayed technology. Originally aimed for the 65nm node in... » read more

Power Shift


The disaggregation of the mobile market, which began with Nokia, Ericsson and RIM challenging the entrenched position of Motorola back in the late 1990s, is shifting again. This time it’s being driven by a different kind of power play, namely physical power issues inside a device. The biggest problem in shrinking die and pushing economies of scale in conjunction with Moore’s Law is relat... » read more

Looking Beyond Moore’s Law


For decades, chip scaling has followed a simple linear curve. In this curve, the transistor gate-pitch scales at 0.7x every two years. This is the driving force behind Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors per chip roughly doubles every two years. But starting at the 16nm/14nm node, there is a change taking place in chip scaling. According to a chart from Imec, there are... » read more

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