Week in Review: Design, Low Power


The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $35 million for 12 projects involving ultra-efficient power management. Called Arpa-E, the program encouraged participants to use medium-voltage electricity in new ways with real-world applications, such as industry, transportation and the grid. The top two award winners were Eaton Corp. (Arden, NC) for its DC wide-bandgap static circuit breaker, ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 5


Multi-beam litho shakeout The multi-beam e-beam market for lithography applications continues to undergo a shakeout amid technical roadblocks and other issues. Last week, ASML announced that it had acquired the intellectual-property (IP) assets of Mapper Lithography, a Dutch supplier of multi-beam e-beam tools for lithography applications that fell into bankruptcy late last year. As it t... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 5


Rubbery material for stretchable electronics Researchers at the University of Houston came up with a rubbery semiconducting material that they say could find applications in stretchable electronics, such as human-machine interfaces, implantable bioelectronics, and robotic skins. Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston and correspo... » read more

Unsticking Moore’s Law


Sanjay Natarajan, corporate vice president at Applied Materials with responsibility for transistor, interconnect and memory solutions, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about variation, Moore's Law, the impact of new materials such as cobalt, and different memory architectures and approaches. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Reliability is becoming more of an... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP OneSpin revealed its latest formal app, Connectivity XL, providing formal connectivity checking to 7nm, multi-billion gate SoC designs. The app generates detailed connectivity specification tables from abstract connectivity specs through a dedicated checking engine that integrates structural and formal analysis to perform on-the-fly, automated abstractions. It supports verificat... » read more

Variation Issues Grow Wider And Deeper


Variation is becoming more problematic as chips become increasingly heterogeneous and as they are used in new applications and different locations, sparking concerns about how to solve these issues and what the full impact will be. In the past, variation in semiconductors was considered a foundry issue, typically at the most advanced process node, and largely ignored by most companies. New p... » read more

What’s Next For AI, Quantum Chips


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the latest R&D trends with Luc Van den hove, president and chief executive of Imec; Emmanuel Sabonnadière, chief executive of Leti; and An Chen, executive director for the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative at the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC). Chen is on assignment from IBM. What follows are excerpts of those conversations, which took pl... » read more

Defect Detection Strategies and Process Partitioning for SE EUV Patterning


ABSTRACT The key challenge for enablement of a 2nd node of single-expose EUV patterning is understanding and mitigating the patterning-related defects that narrow the process window. Typical in-line inspection techniques, such as broadband plasma (291x) and e-beam systems, find it difficult to detect the main yield-detracting defects post-develop, and thus understanding the effects of process ... » read more

Mostly Upbeat Outlook For Chips


2019 has started with cautious optimism for the semiconductor industry, despite dark clouds that dot the horizon. Market segments such as cryptocurrencies and virtual reality are not living up to expectations, the market for smart phones appears to be saturated, and DRAM prices are dropping, leading to cut-backs in capital expenditures. EDA companies are talking about sales to China being pu... » read more

AI’s Growing Impact On Chip Design


Synopsys chairman and co-CEO Aart de Geus sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the rapid infusion of AI into electronics, how that is changing chip design and the software that runs on those chips. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: We're dealing with a bunch of new markets, more customized design, and AI seems to be creeping into everything. How does this i... » read more

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