5 Reasons Why In-Chip Monitoring Is Here To Stay


When the first car rolled off his production line in 1913, Henry Ford would have already envisioned just how prolific the automobile would become. However, would he have foreseen the extent to which monitors and sensors would become critical to the modern internal combustion engine? The requirement for energy efficiency, power performance and reliability in high volume manufactured vehicles ... » read more

Where FD-SOI Works Best (Part 2)


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss changes in the FD-SOI world and what's behind them, with James Lamb, deputy CTO for advanced semiconductor manufacturing and corporate technical fellow at Brewer Science; Giorgio Cesana, director of technical marketing at STMicroelectronics; Olivier Vatel, senior vice president and CTO at Screen Semiconductor Solutions; and Carlos Mazure, CTO at Soi... » read more

Explaining Adaptive Voltage Scaling And Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling


A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. What exactly do we mean by Adaptive Voltage Scaling versus Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling? Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS) involves the reduction of power by changing the operating conditions within an ASIC in a closed loop. Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS), on the other hand, is a power management technique where the voltage is increased ... » read more

Supply Monitoring On 28nm & FinFET: The Challenges Posed


A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. What are the issues with supplies on advanced nodes? The supplies have been coming down, quicker than the threshold voltages which has led to less supply margin. In addition to this, the interconnects are becoming thinner and closer together, which is pushing up resistance and also capacitance. What is the effect of these issues? In short, it... » read more

New Thermal Issues Emerge


Thermal monitoring is becoming more critical as gate density continues to increase at each new node and as chips are developed for safety critical markets such as automotive. This may sound counterintuitive because the whole point of device scaling is to increase gate density. But at 10/7 and 7/5nm, static current leakage is becoming a bigger issue, raising questions about how long [getkc id... » read more

Pushing Performance Limits


Trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of a chip sounds like a good idea, but it increases risk and cost, extends development time, reduced yield, and it may even limit the environments in which the chip can operate. And yet, given the amount of margin added at every step of the development process, it seems obvious that plenty of improvements could be made. "Every design can be o... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Barco Silex, now named Silex Inside, split from parent company Barco in a management buyout in partnership with a group of private investors lead by Dutch investment company Vehold BV. The company will continue its focus on security, video compression, and interface IP, along with design services. Tools & IP Mentor is making a version of its HyperLynx design rule checking tool ... » read more

Why Pinpoint Accuracy Is Important When Monitoring Conditions On Chip


A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. Why is there an increasing requirement for monitoring on chip? Since the beginning of the semiconductor industry, we have relied on a doubling of transistor count per unit area every 18 months as a way to increase performance and functionality of devices. Since 28nm, this has broken. As such, designers now need to find new ways to continue increasing... » read more

The Implementation of Embedded PVT Monitoring Subsystems In Today’s Cutting Edge Technologies


This new whitepaper from Moortec takes a comprehensive look at the Implementation of Embedded PVT Monitoring Subsystems in Today’s Cutting Edge Technologies and how this can benefit today’s advanced node semiconductor design engineers by improving the performance and reliability of SoC designs. With advances in CMOS technology, and the scaling of transistor channel lengths to nanometer (nm)... » read more

The Importance Of Embedded In-Chip Monitoring In Advanced Node CMOS Technology


By Oliver King & Ramsay Allen With advances in CMOS technology and the scaling of transistor channel lengths to nanometer (nm) dimensions, the density of digital circuits per unit area of silicon has increased as has the process variability of devices manufactured. The increase in digital logic (or gate) density, which equates to an increase in power density, is a major contributor to... » read more

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