Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing — data center, edge, IoT Marvell is working on silicon for the data infrastructure market using TSMC’s 5nm process node. Marvell says it has multiple designs already under contract for its 5nm portfolio across the carrier, enterprise, automotive, and data center markets. The first products are sampling by the end of next year.  Ansys’ multiphysics signoff tools, R... » read more

Chiplet Reliability Challenges Ahead


Assembling chips using LEGO-like hard IP is finally beginning to take root, more than two decades after it was first proposed, holding the promise of faster time to market with predictable results and higher yield. But as these systems of chips begin showing up in mission-critical and safety-critical applications, ensuring reliability is proving to be stubbornly difficult. The main driver fo... » read more

Fleet Management Of Data Center Electronics


Data has become the most valuable resource of our time, with processing, storage and networking being the key assets of the modern digital world. This has fueled a two-decade spread of massive data centers around the globe and a surge in the cloud services they offer people, corporations, and countries alike. New services like video, game streaming, AI and social media push the need for data... » read more

Auto Chip Reliability Opens Door To Other Industries


Digital chips in the semiconductor industry evolve from each other. Ideas flow into each other over the years, with occasional big leaps in evolution. The term ‘evolution’ fits because one chip evolves to perfectly optimized for one industry niche. But what happens when one industry’s chip becomes a useful for other industries because it is more cost-effective than what is being used i... » read more

In-field In-Mission Reliability Monitoring Based On Deep Data


This paper describes a Deep Data approach to reliability monitoring in advanced electronics, based on degradation as a precursor for failure. By applying machine learning algorithms and analytics to data created by on-chip monitoring IPs (Agents), IC/system health and performance can be continuously monitored, at all stages of the product lifecycle. Realtime degradation analysis of critical par... » read more

No Two Chips Are Alike


As semiconductor processes continue to shrink it’s becoming increasingly challenging to manage the parameters of individual devices not only across the diameter of the wafer, but also across the length of a single chip, especially for a complex chip with a large area. Today’s standard approach to this problem is to assume the worst case and to create a sub-optimal design that accommodates t... » read more

Navigating Timing Margins Like Waze


Remember the pre-smartphone days, before navigation apps had our backs? Thanks to a lack of real-time visibility, ‘arriving early’ was the go-to strategy to avoid arriving late. Factor in too much ‘holdup time’ and you’d arrive a little too early. There’s nothing worse than nervously burning off an excess 30 minutes over a coffee you really didn’t need. Today you wouldn’t ... » read more

Advanced Packaging Makes Testing More Complex


The limits of monolithic integration, together with advances in chip interconnect and packaging technologies, have spurred the growth of heterogeneous advanced packaging where multiple dies are co-packaged using 2.5D and 3D approaches. But this also raises complex test challenges, which are driving new standards and approaches to advanced-package testing. While many of the showstopper issues... » read more

Monitoring IC Abnormalities Before Failures


The rising complexities of semiconductor processes and design are driving an increasing use of on-chip monitors to support data analytics from an IC’s birth through its end of life — no matter how long that projected lifespan. Engineers have long used on-chip circuitry to assist with manufacturing test, silicon debug and failure analysis. Providing visibility and controllability of inter... » read more

Data Becomes Key For Next-Gen Chips


Data has become vital to understanding the useful life of a semiconductor — and the knowledge gleaned is key to staying competitive beyond Moore’s Law. What's changed is a growing reliance earlier in the design cycle on multiple sources of data, including some from further right in the design-through-manufacturing flow. While this holistic approach may seem logical enough, the semiconduc... » read more

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