Batteries Charge To The Edge


Long-awaited advances in battery chemistry and materials science are beginning to roll out, opening the door for higher capacity, faster charging, and much lower likelihood of thermal runaway. This is a high-stakes race, fueled by an insatiable demand for power everywhere from handheld devices to data centers. When Finland's Donut Lab claimed earlier this year that it had developed a solid-s... » read more

Chiplet Standards Aim For Plug-n-Play


Key Takeaways Die-to-die chiplet standards are only the beginning. Many more standards are necessary for a chiplet marketplace. A number of such standards have either had initial versions released or are in progress. Existing work covers packaging, a system architecture, various design kits, a universal link layer, and updates to BoW. Today’s chiplets exist in silos. In a ... » read more

Blog Review: Apr. 15


Cadence's Wilson Kobalkar shares why eUSB2‑V2 represents a major evolutionary step for the USB 2.0 ecosystem, including how it achieves multi‑gigabit HSx operation and why symmetric/asymmetric modes unlock new design possibilities. Synopsys' Akanksha Soni explains the difference between metal-oxide-metal, metal-insulator-metal, and metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors, identifying the ad... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Deals, Funding Intel will join Elon Musk’s Terafab chip manufacturing project alongside Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Intel described its role as helping refactor silicon fab technology for a project targeting production of 1 TW/year of compute for AI and robotics applications. Intel and Google are expanding a multi-year collaboration on AI and cloud infrastructure, with Intel Xeon processo... » read more

Power Integrity Without Blind Spots: A System Level Approach To 3D-ICs


Power delivery has become one of the defining challenges of next-generation semiconductor systems. As AI, high-performance computing, and data-centric workloads drive higher performance and tighter integration, traditional 2D SoC design approaches are reaching their limits. The industry’s shift toward 2.5D and 3D heterogeneous integration promises breakthroughs in performance and efficiency�... » read more

DRAM’s Whac‑A‑Mole Security Crisis


Key takeaways: Rowhammer remains a DRAM security threat, while Rowpress has increasingly become a related threat. New commands issued by the memory controller can help manage refreshes, but they’re not a perfect solution. A smaller, vertical DRAM cell may eliminate the problem, but it’s years away. Rowhammer has been a persistent DRAM issue across several memory generati... » read more

Fast Isn’t Fast Enough: Redefining Metrics for Edge AI


Key Takeaways: Edge AI performance is about low latency and power efficiency, not peak TOPS. Memory bandwidth and data movement now limit edge AI more than compute. Successful edge AI requires balanced hardware, software, and fast model updates. Experts At The Table: Today’s chip architect must contend with multiple factors when architecting AI processors for fast and effi... » read more

AI Accelerators Usher In New Era For IC Test


Key Takeaways The parallelism in AI accelerators enables low latency but complicates failure isolation. HBM can account for 50% of package cost, so known-good stack assurance is critical. DFT and test cooperate to solve final test, singulated die test, SLT, and in-system test for data centers. AI accelerators are used for everything from training large language models to mak... » read more

Untrusted Analog Components Add Risks For Critical Infrastructure


Key Takeaways New certificate-based solutions are necessary within fabs and packaging houses to deliver trusted semiconductors. Physical IDs bind the device to the certificate, but it needs to be immutable and unclonable. Extrinsic IDs are required for analog, mixed-signal, sensor ICs as well as discrete components. Rising concern over the source and destination of chips, an... » read more

Automated Multiphysics For Successful 3D-IC Design


By John Ferguson and Sheltha Nolke For design teams adopting 3D-IC architectures, the relentless pursuit of performance and reliability brings a familiar, yet increasingly complex, set of challenges: how do we manage power, dissipate heat and navigate the intricate dance of physics within these stacked architectures? While 3D-ICs offer significant advantages in size, performance, power effic... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →