tag: NIST

Inside The SRC
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk with Ken Hansen, the new president and chief executive of the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC), a U.S.-based technology research consortium. Prior to joining the SRC in May, Hansen was vice president and chief technology officer at Freescale. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: My impression is that the SRC allocates funding for va... » read more

Measuring FinFETs Will Get Harder
By Mark LaPedus - 19 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 2

The industry is gradually migrating toward chips based on finFET transistors at 16nm/14nm and beyond, but manufacturing those finFETs is proving to be a daunting challenge in the fab. Patterning is the most difficult process for finFETs. But another process, metrology, is fast becoming one of the biggest challenges for the next-generation transistor technology. In fact, [getkc id="252" kc_n... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 27
By Mark LaPedus - 27 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 0

CD-SAXS makes progress For years, chipmakers have used metrology tools based on various optical techniques, such as scatterometry. But optical-based scatterometry may one day run out of steam, prompting the need for a possible replacement. One long-awaited candidate is called X-ray scattering. There are various flavors of X-ray scattering, including CD small-angle X-ray scattering (CD-SAXS)... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 13
By Jesse Allen - 13 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 0

Cooling down FPGAs Georgia Institute of Technology researchers found a way to put liquid cooling a few hundred microns away from where the transistors are operating by cutting microfluidic passages directly into the backsides of production FPGAs. The research, backed by DARPA, is believed to be the first example of liquid cooling directly on an operating high-performance CMOS chip. To ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 6
By Mark LaPedus - 06 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 0

Magnetic mass spectrometers The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab) has developed a mass spectrometer, based on what the organization claims is the world’s highest field superconducting magnet. The instrument from National MagLab is called a Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometer. The mass spectrometer boasts a 21 tesla magnet, which is ... » read more

zeroK NanoTech: FIB Circuit Edit
By Mark LaPedus - 30 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

Focused ion beam (FIB) circuit editing is an enabling technology that has been around for some time. Using a standard FIB tool, a chipmaker can basically edit portions of a circuit before it goes into production. It allows chipmakers to debug chips, cut traces, add metal connections and perform other functions. One startup, zeroK NanoTech, is putting a new and innovative twist on FIB circui... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 15
By Mark LaPedus - 15 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

Lasersabers and laser swords In 2013, the California Institute of Technology, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found a way to bind two photons, thereby forming photonic molecules. To accomplish this feat, Caltech, Harvard and MIT pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum chamber. They used lasers to cool the atoms. Then, they fired photons into a cloud of atoms. This, ... » read more

Lightweight Cryptography For The IoE
By Ernest Worthman - 03 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

This is the age where technology is expected to do more, faster, anonymously, and often invisibly. And it's supposed to use less power, with smaller footprints, unobtrusively and intuitively. And all that needs to be protected with cryptography. That's the goal, at least. But as Simon Blake-Wilson, vice president of products and marketing for [getentity id="22671" e_name="Rambus"]' Cryptogra... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: August 18
By Mark LaPedus - 18 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

Making quantum robots Quantum dots are inorganic semiconductor nano-crystals. The technology can be used to boost the color gamut in LCD TVs. It can also be used in LEDs and other products. The problem? Quantum dots are expensive to fabricate. With funding from Dow Chemical, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has developed a new fabrication process. In doing so, researchers a... » read more

Emerging Security Protocols
By Ernest Worthman - 06 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

As the proliferation of mobile devices ramps up at escalating rates, securing these devices and the infrastructure they run on is becoming a top priority for both the hardware and the data that swirls within it. Traditional security platforms such as firewalls and antivirus programs are still a viable part of the security envelope, but the rapid emergence of zero-day/hour threats is somethin... » read more

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