Blog Review: Jan. 25


Cadence's Shyam Sharma shares some important design and verification considerations when working with DDR5 SDRAM and DDR5 DIMM-based memory subsystems, including reset and power on initialization, speed bin compliance, and refresh, RFM, and temperature requirements. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster examines trends in adoption of languages and libraries for IC and ASIC design, testbench creation, a... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 18


Synopsys' Dana Neustadter, Sara Zafar Jafarzadeh, and Ruud Derwig argue that we are already at an inflection point for post-quantum security because devices and infrastructure systems with longer life cycles or communicating data that must be kept confidential for an extended period need to have a path towards quantum-safe solutions. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster looks at trends in adoption of ... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Global semiconductor sales hit $45.5 billion during the month of November 2022, according to SIA’s January announcement. Year-over-year sales increased in November in the Americas (5.2%), Europe (4.5%), and Japan (1.2%), but decreased in Asia Pacific/rest of world (-13.9%) and China (-21.2%). Month-to-month sales were down across all regions. The United States, Mexico and Canada vowed to... » read more

Will Floating Point 8 Solve AI/ML Overhead?


While the media buzzes about the Turing Test-busting results of ChatGPT, engineers are focused on the hardware challenges of running large language models and other deep learning networks. High on the ML punch list is how to run models more efficiently using less power, especially in critical applications like self-driving vehicles where latency becomes a matter of life or death. AI already ... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


SEMI , SEMI Europe and European Commission representatives, in consultation with semiconductor industry stakeholders, proposed initiatives to overcome the skills shortage in Europe’s microelectronics industry: Create an industry image campaign to raise public awareness on how technology is shaping the future, and how workers can establish careers in the semiconductor industry. Remove ... » read more

Chip Industry’s Technical Paper Roundup: Dec. 20


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=71 /] If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a good fit for our global audience. At a minimum, papers need to be well researched and documented, relevant to the semiconductor ecosystem, and free of marketing bias. There is no cost involved for us po... » read more

Automatic Layout Generator Targeting Region-based Layouts for Advanced FinFET-Based Full-Custom Circuits (UT Austin/NVIDIA)


A technical paper titled "AutoCRAFT: Layout Automation for Custom Circuits in Advanced FinFET Technologies" was published by researchers at UT Austin and NVIDIA. "This paper presents AutoCRAFT, an automatic layout generator targeting region-based layouts for advanced FinFET-based full-custom circuits. AutoCRAFT uses specialized place-and-route (P&R) algorithms to handle various design cons... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


The more than 1,400 attendees at this week’s IEDM, which celebrated the 75th anniversary of the transistor, were clearly focused on making the next 75 years of semiconductors even more remarkable than the last. Intel, Samsung, TSMC, STMicroelectronics, GlobalFoundries and imec announced breakthrough devices, materials, and even integration approaches. These included: Intel showcased adva... » read more

IC Stresses Affect Reliability At Advanced Nodes


Thermal-induced stress is now one of the leading causes of transistor failures, and it is becoming a top focus for chipmakers as more and different kinds of chips and materials are packaged together for safety- and mission-critical applications. The causes of stress are numerous. In heterogeneous packages, it can stem from multiple components composed of different materials. “These materia... » read more

Chip Industry’s Technical Paper Roundup: Dec. 5


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=67 /] If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a good fit for our global audience. At a minimum, papers need to be well researched and documented, relevant to the semiconductor ecosystem, and free of marketing bias. There is no cost involved for u... » read more

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