Stacked Die From A Networking Angle


By Mark LaPedus The first wave of 2.5D chips using silicon interposers are trickling out in the marketplace.FPGA vendor Xilinx was the first chipmaker to ship a 2.5D device, and Altera, Cisco, Huawei and IBM recently have talked about their respective 2.5D chip developments. Generally, Altera and Xilinx have taken a somewhat identical and straightforward approach. The two companies are sepa... » read more

Fixing The Supply Chain


For all the promise and subsequent anxiety about moving to the next process node or stacking die, the real problem isn’t technology. It isn’t even cost per transistor. It’s who will take responsibility when something goes wrong. Notice the word “when” rather than “if.” Rising complexity means that chips no longer can be fully verified, so errors are a given. Some errors are wor... » read more

3 Ways To Differentiate


Time-to-market pressures and complexity have put the squeeze on design teams. They have to bring incredibly complex SoCs to market on time, make sure they’re functionally correct and work within a tight power budget, and they have to come in on or under budget. Amazingly, they’re still able to accomplish this, thanks to some heroic efforts on the part of engineers and some incredible adv... » read more

Experts At The Table: SoC Verification


By Ed Sperling System-Level Design sat down to discuss the challenges of verification with Frank Schirrmeister, group director for product marketing of the System Development Suite at Cadence; Charles Janac, chairman and CEO of Arteris, Venkat Iyer, CTO of Uniquify; and Adnan Hamid, CEO of Breker Verification Systems. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SLD: Is the amount of time... » read more

Keeping Pace With Moore’s Law


By Ann Steffora Mutschler As the number of transistors doubles with each move to a smaller manufacturing process technology, there are questions as to whether the current cadre of place and route tools will be able to keep in lock step. Have no fear, assured Saleem Haider, senior director of marketing for physical design and DFM at Synopsys. “For the increase in densities that we get with... » read more

What’s Before Stacked Die?


By Mark LaPedus Advanced 2.5D/3D chip stacking has a number of challenges and is still a few years away from mass production. In fact, mass production may not occur until 2015 or 2016. But OEMs can ill afford to sit still and wait for 2.5D/3D technology to mature. So, until 2.5D/3D is ready for prime time, chipmakers and IC-packaging houses are under pressure to innovate and extend current ... » read more

Welcome To The ‘Probably Good Die’ Era


By Mark LaPedus In today’s systems, consumers want more performance and bandwidth with a longer battery life. Some chip segments are keeping up with the demands. Still other areas are falling way behind the curve. Battery life is an obvious problem, but memory bandwidth is under the radar. “Initially, memory bandwidth nearly doubled every two years, but this trend has slowed over the pa... » read more

Foundry Landscape Changes In 3D


By Mark LaPedus Over the last year, leading-edge silicon foundries announced their new and respective strategies in the emerging 2.5D/3D chip arena. The ink is barely dry and now the foundry landscape is changing. One new vendor, Tezzaron Semiconductor, is entering the market. The 3D DRAM supplier plans to provide select 2.5D/3D foundry services within its recently acquired fab in Austin, T... » read more

Straight Talk On 3D TSVs


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss 3D device challenges and applications with John Lau, a fellow at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a research organization in Taiwan. SMD: What is ITRI doing in 3D TSVs? Lau: At ITRI we have developed the world’s first Applied Materials’ 300mm (3D TSV) integration line. The line was comple... » read more

Upping The Ante


The increasing number of research projects under way to solve many of the thorniest issues in the history of semiconductor design and manufacturing are a testament to just how tough the job has become. Never before have there been so many technological roadblocks at the same time—and so many potential options for solving them. Those challenges—or opportunities, as marketing execs like to... » read more

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