HBM’s Future: Necessary But Expensive


High-bandwidth memory (HBM) is becoming the memory of choice for hyperscalers, but there are still questions about its ultimate fate in the mainstream marketplace. While it’s well-established in data centers, with usage growing due to the demands of AI/ML, wider adoption is inhibited by drawbacks inherent in its basic design. On the one hand, HBM offers a compact 2.5D form factor that enables... » 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

Nanoimprint Finally Finds Its Footing


Nanoimprint lithography, which for decades has trailed behind traditional optical lithography, is emerging as the technology of choice for the rapidly growing photonics and biotech chips markets. First introduced in the mid-1990s, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has consistently been touted as a lower-cost alternative to traditional optical lithography. Even today, NIL potentially is capable o... » read more

Transitioning To Photonics


Silicon photonics is undergoing a resurgence as traditional approaches for reducing power and heat become more difficult and expensive, opening the door to a whole new set of technological challenges and driving up demand for a skill set that is in short supply today. From a technology standpoint, photonics is extremely complex. Signals drift, they are modulated with heat, and structures lik... » read more

Challenges In Photonics Testing


Photonics is poised for significant growth due a rapid increase in data volumes and the need to move that data quickly and with minimal heat. But to reach its full potential photonics will have to overcome several production hurdles. The biggest challenge today involves alignment. While the industry is poised to produce billions of units, it still relies on testing practices that don't scale. ... » read more

Using Photonic Band Gap in Triangular SiC Structures for Efficient Quantum Nanophotonic HW


A new technical paper titled "Utilizing photonic band gap in triangular silicon carbide structures for efficient quantum nanophotonic hardware" was published by researchers at UC Davis. Abstract: "Silicon carbide is among the leading quantum information material platforms due to the long spin coherence and single-photon emitting properties of its color center defects. Applications of silico... » read more

Standards: The Next Step For Silicon Photonics


Testing silicon photonics is becoming more critical and more complicated as the technology is used in new applications ranging from medicine to cryptography, lidar, and quantum computing, but how to do that in a way that is both consistent and predictable is still unresolved. For the past three decades, photonics largely has been an enabler for high-speed communications, a lucrative market t... » read more

Transferring Qubits Directly Between Quantum Computing Microchips (U. of Sussex/ Universal Quantum)


A new technical paper titled "A high-fidelity quantum matter-link between ion-trap microchip modules" was published by researchers at University of Sussex, Universal Quantum Ltd, University College London and University of Bristol. “As quantum computers grow, we will eventually be constrained by the size of the microchip, which limits the number of quantum bits such a chip can accommodate.... » read more

Multi-Wavelength, Multimode Communication Scheme For On-Chip and Chip-to-Chip Interconnects


A technical paper titled "Multi-dimensional data transmission using inverse-designed silicon photonics and microcombs" was published by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, University of Central Florida, NIST, and others. "Here we demonstrate an integrated multi-dimensional communication scheme that combines wavelength- and mode- multiplexing on a silicon photonic circuit. Using foundry-compati... » read more

Heterogeneous Integration Issues And Developments


There are a slew of new developments in advanced packaging, from new materials, chiplets, and interconnect schemes, to challenges involving how to physically put chips in a package, metallization, thermal cycling, and parasitics in the interconnect path. Dick Otte, CEO of Promex Industries, talks about how this will change chip design and manufacturing, and how those changes are likely to unfol... » read more

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