Manufacturing Bits: July 25


Metrology for the intelligence community The semiconductor industry continues to move full speed ahead with traditional chip scaling. There are several challenges in the arena. One of the big but lessor known challenges is metrology. Metrology, the science of characterizing and measuring films and structures, is becoming more complex, challenging and expensive at each node. Looking to solv... » read more

Overcoming The Limits Of Scaling


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the increasing reliance on architectural choices for improvements in power, performance and area, with [getperson id="11425" comment=" Sundari Mitra"], CEO of [getentity id="22535" comment="NetSpeed Systems"]; Charlie Janac, chairman and CEO of [getentity id="22674" e_name="Arteris"]; [getperson id="11032" comment="Simon Davidmann"] CEO of [getentit... » read more

When Cryptographers Disagree


Six of the world's leading cryptography experts sat down this week to explore the most pressing issues in security. They took up topics ranging from whether Apple should facilitate the FBI's access to a known terrorist's iPhone, to what will become the next important cryptography algorithm. Among them: Ronald Rivest, an Institute Professor at MIT; Adi Shamir, co-inventor of the RSA algorithm... » read more

Introduction To Quantum Computing


Quantum computing has attracted a lot of attention lately. Recent revelations about the extent of the U.S. National Security Agency’s data collection programs, along with several large-scale corporate data breaches, have called attention to the need for secure communications. Quantum computing has potentially far-reaching implications for data security, both reducing the effectiveness of conv... » read more

We Are All Vulnerable


Target, Neiman Marcus, Michaels. We are all familiar with the huge loss of personal and financial data from these establishments. A lot more people are fuming over the data being accessed by the NSA. While we only know the details as leaked by Edward Snowden, this has to be the biggest data breach in history with the government having hacked into the data centers of Google, Yahoo and who knows ... » read more

Quantum Computer Race Heats Up


For years, there has been an intense race among various nations to develop the world’s fastest supercomputers. The U.S. and Japan led the field until 2010, when China stunned the market and rolled out the world’s fastest supercomputer. And today, China continues to lead the field with a supercomputer capable of running at speeds of 33.86 petaflops per second. While the supercomputer race... » read more

Lessons From Healthcare.gov


Patterning equipment uses software and needs software security. With that rather weak segue, I would like to discuss software projects, considering they are in the news at the moment. The stories about the healthcare.gov rollout bring back fond memories for all of us of software projects that have gone horribly wrong. On the list of things that guarantee a project will miss deadlines, late c... » read more

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