Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Synopsys’ board of directors appointed Sassine Ghazi as president and chief executive officer effective on Jan. 1, 2024. Ghazi, who is currently the COO, will succeed Aart de Geus, co-founder, chair, and CEO of Synopsys, who will then become the executive chair of board of directors. IBM Research introduced  an energy-efficient mixed-signal analog AI chip for DNN inferencing and demonstra... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Worldwide semiconductor industry sales dropped 21% year-over-year in May to $40.7 billion, mostly driven by decreases in the Americas (-22%), Asia Pacific/All Other (-23%), and China (-29%). But there also were hints of a recovery. The three-month moving average showed a 1.7% increase in sales, with the largest increases in China (+3.9%) and Europe (+2%). “Despite continuing market sluggishne... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Keysight Technologies said it intends to acquire ESI Group for €913 million (~$998.6 million). ESI Group provides virtual prototyping solutions for the automotive and aerospace end markets that can create real-time digital twins to simulate a product's behavior during testing and real-life use. MLCommons announced the latest results from two MLPerf benchmark suites. One aims to measure the... » read more

Research Bits: June 13


Converting heat to electricity Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder fabricated a device to boost the conversion of heat into electricity. The technique involves depositing hundreds of thousands of microscopic columns of gallium nitride atop a silicon wafer. Layers of silicon are then removed from the underside of the waf... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Arm debuted its latest platform for mobile computing. Arm Total Compute Solutions 2023 adds the new Immortalis-G720 GPU based on the 5th Generation GPU architecture, which redefines parts of the graphics pipeline to reduce memory bandwidth for the next generation of high geometry games and real-time 3D applications. The company also added two new Mali GPUs. In addition, Arm introduced a cluster... » read more

Research Bits: May 10


Growing 2D TMDs on chips Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Ericsson Research found a way to “grow” layers of 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials directly on top of a fully fabricated silicon chip, a technique they say could enable denser integrations. The researchers focused on molybdenum disulfide, which is f... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) outlined its plan for a National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) to be created using a share of the $11 billion in funds from the CHIPS Act marked for research and development. While a large portion of the CHIPS Act investment is set to boost U.S. fabs and manufacturing capabilities, the NSTC aims to also support the design side, ... » read more

Research Bits: April 18


Simplified microwave photonic filter for 6G Researchers from Peking University developed a new chip-sized microwave photonic filter to separate communication signals from noise and suppress unwanted interference across the full radio frequency spectrum. “This new microwave filter chip has the potential to improve wireless communication, such as 6G, leading to faster internet connections, ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Arm and Intel Foundry Services inked a multi-generation agreement to enable chip designers to build Arm-based SoCs on the Intel 18A process. The initial focus is mobile SoC designs, but the deal allows for potential expansion into automotive, IoT, data center, aerospace, and government applications. IFS and Arm will undertake design technology co-optimization (DTCO) to optimize chip design and ... » read more

Research Bits: March 21


Micropatterning with sugar A scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) discovered a transfer printing process that can deposit microcircuit patterns on curved and textured surfaces using sugar candy. Transfer printing methods, such as flexible tapes, are often used for surfaces that are difficult to directly print on. But they have difficulty with conforming to ... » read more

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