Startup Funding: December 2020


AI hardware startups were hot in our December startup-funding focus, with two companies landing rounds exceeding $100M and plenty of others seeing investment. Two Chinese EDA companies received funding in a bid to boost the country's semiconductor ecosystem. One company providing control systems for fabs achieved $8M in Series A, and both autonomous driving and electric vehicles pulled in lots ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 5


Quiet qubits Researchers at the University of New South Wales Sydney recorded the lowest noise levels yet for a semiconductor qubit. Charge noise caused by material imperfections interferes with the information encoded on qubits, reducing accuracy. "The level of charge noise in semiconductor qubits has been a critical obstacle to achieving the accuracy levels we need for large-scale error-c... » read more

Startup Funding: November 2020


Numerous chipmakers pulled in funding in November 2020, with investors putting money into interconnects, memories, AI hardware, and quantum computing. Launching from stealth was a startup aiming to combine AI and 5G. Autonomous delivery did well, too, with one company raising a massive $500M. This month, we take a look at 28 companies that raised a collective $1.1B. Semi & design Connec... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 25


Lidar-on-a-chip At the upcoming IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Samsung will present a paper on the industry’s first single-chip lidar beam scanner. (Go to this link and then look for paper 7.2, “Single-Chip Beam Scanner with Integrated Light Source for Real-Time Light Detection and Ranging,” J. Lee et al, Samsung.) Lidar, or light imaging, detection, and ranging, ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 9


Integrated transistor cooling Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) created a single chip that combines a transistor and microfluidic cooling system for more efficient transistor heat management. The team focused on a co-design approach for the electrical and mechanical aspects of the chip, bringing the electronics and cooling design together and aiming to extract... » read more

Startup Funding: October 2020


October 2020 was a big month for startups across the automotive space, with sizeable funding all around. Three startups based out of China brought in over $100M apiece for ADAS and autonomous driving, and a fourth U.S.-based startup saw $125M investment for simulating and testing autonomous driving systems. Two electric vehicle manufacturers also received $100M+ rounds. Collectively, the auto c... » read more

Rethinking The Scaling Mantra


What makes a new chip better than a previous version, or a competitor's version, has been changing for some time. In most cases the key metrics are still performance and power, but what works for one application or use case increasingly is different from another. Advancements are rarely tied just to process nodes these days. Even the most die-hard proponents of Moore's Law recognize that the... » read more

Regaining The Edge In U.S. Chip Manufacturing


The United States is developing new strategies to prevent it from falling further behind Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps even China in semiconductor manufacturing, as trade tensions and national security concerns continue to grow. For years, the U.S. has been a leader in the development of new chip products like GPUs and microprocessors. But from a chip manufacturing standpoint, the U.S. is losin... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 20


Benchmarking quantum layout synthesis Computer scientists at the University of California Los Angeles found that current compilers for quantum computers are inhibiting optimal performance and argue that better quantum compilation design could help improve computation speeds up to 45 times. The team designed a family of benchmark quantum circuits with known optimal depths or sizes, which cou... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 12


More stable quantum states Researchers at the University of Chicago found a way to make quantum systems retain coherency 10,000 times longer. The fragile nature of quantum states remains a challenge for developing practical applications of quantum computing, as they can be easily disrupted by background noise coming from vibrations, temperature changes or stray electromagnetic fields. Ap... » read more

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