Is There Any Hope For Asynchronous Design?


In an era when power has become a fundamental design constraint, questions persist about whether asynchronous logic has a role to play. It is a design style said to have significant benefits and yet has never resulted in more than a few experiments. Synchronous design utilizes a clock, where the clock frequency is set by the longest and slowest path in the design. That includes potential var... » read more

Chip Industry’s Technical Paper Roundup: Mar. 6


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=84 /] 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 ... » read more

Agile HW Design: Fully Automatic Equivalence Checking Workflow


A new technical paper titled "An Equivalence Checking Framework for Agile Hardware Design" was published by researchers at Portland State University and Intel. Abstract "Agile hardware design enables designers to produce new design iterations efficiently. Equivalence checking is critical in ensuring that a new design iteration conforms to its specification. In this paper, we introduce an eq... » read more

Technical Paper Round-up: July 11


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=38 /]   Semiconductor Engineering is in the process of building this library of research papers. Please send suggestions (via comments section below) for what else you’d like us to incorporate. If you have research papers you are trying to promote, we will review them to see if they are a ... » read more

Brain-Inspired Computing Device That Programs/RePrograms HW On Demand With Electrical Pulses


Multiple academic and government institutions jointly developed a new computer device that can "program and program computer hardware on demand through electrical pulses," according to this Argonne National Lab news release. The device's key materials are neodymium, nickel and oxygen and is referred to as a perovskite nickelate. This new research paper titled "Reconfigurable perovskite nicke... » read more

Research Bits: March 29


Brain-like AI chip Researchers from Purdue University, Santa Clara University, Portland State University, Pennsylvania State University, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois Chicago, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and University of Georgia built a reprogrammable chip that could be used as the basis for brain-like AI hardware. “The brains of living beings can continuously l... » read more

Joint R&D Has Its Ups And Downs


As corporate spending on research and development dwindles, enterprises are reaching out to colleges and universities to supplement their R&D. And they often are finding eager partners in those endeavors, as professors and their graduate students look for help, financial and technical, in addressing long-term research projects. “Pure research is just a luxury no one can afford anymore,... » read more

Asynchronous Design: Is It Time Yet?


Non-mainstream technologies can offer advantages over more commonly used approaches, but usually at some additional cost (otherwise they’d probably be mainstream). The additional cost could be in design time, area, testability or whatever, and it might even be only a temporary disadvantage. If comparable time and energy were invested in the new technology, perhaps the additional costs would d... » read more