A Power-First Approach


It is becoming evidently clear that heat will be the limiter for the future of semiconductors. Already, large percentages of a chip are dark at any time, because if everything operated at the same time the amount of heat generated would exceed the ability of the chip and package to dissipate that energy. If we now start to contemplate stacking dies, where the ability to extract heat remains con... » read more

Research Bits: Sept. 20


Multi-mode memristors Researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and Empa built a new memristor that can operate in multiple modes and could potentially be used to mimic neurons in more applications. “There are different operation modes for memristors, and it is advantageous to be able to use all these modes depending on an artificial neural network’s architecture,” said R... » read more

Thermal Simulation Of DSMBGA And Coupled Thermal-Mechanical Simulation Of Large Body HDFO


Electronic packaging has continued to become more complex with higher device count, higher power densities and Heterogeneous Integration (HI) becoming more common. In the mobile space, systems that were once separate components on a printed circuit board (PCB) have now been relocated along with all their associated passive devices and interconnects into single System in Package (SiP) style suba... » read more

Thermal Cycling Failure In Electronics


Each time a device is turned off and on, its temperature changes. (Just think about how often your phone lights up all day.) Energy flowing through several layers of tightly stacked materials causes devices to heat up, then rapidly cool down. This repeated oscillation between temperatures over the lifetime of a device is called thermal cycling. Why thermal management is important Thermal cycl... » read more

Thermally Optimizing A High-Power PCB


The growth of battery-powered applications is presenting new challenges for designers of electronic motor-driven solutions. Targeting higher performance and efficiency, the power stages of these products must manage high currents while meeting strict power dissipation and size requirements. This white paper illustrates a thermally aware workflow with the Cadence® Celsius™ Thermal Solver... » read more

Overcoming Signal, Power, And Thermal Challenges Implementing GDDR6 Interfaces


Graphics processing units (GPUs) and graphics double data rate (GDDR) memory interfaces are essential to graphics cards, game consoles, high-performance computing (HPC), and machine learning applications. These interfaces enable data transfer speeds of over 665GB per second today and will continue to support well over a terabyte per second (TBps) in next-generation GDDR interfaces. Signal integ... » read more

DRAM Thermal Issues Reach Crisis Point


Within the DRAM world, thermal issues are at a crisis point. At 14nm and below, and in the most advanced packaging schemes, an entirely new metric may be needed to address the multiplier effect of how thermal density increasingly turns minor issues into major problems. A few overheated transistors may not greatly affect reliability, but the heat generated from a few billion transistors does.... » read more

Effect of Different Frequency Scaling Levels on Memory in Regard to Total Power Consumption in Mobile MPSoC


New technical paper titled "CPU-GPU-Memory DVFS for Power-Efficient MPSoC in Mobile Cyber Physical Systems" from researchers at University of Essex, Nosh Technologies, and University of Southampton. Abstract "Most modern mobile cyber-physical systems such as smartphones come equipped with multi-processor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) with variant computing capacity both to cater to performance r... » read more

Key Applications For In-Chip Monitoring IP


The latest SoCs on advanced semiconductor nodes especially FinFET, typically include a fabric of sensors spread across the die and for good reason. But why and what are the benefits? This article explores some of the key applications for In Chip monitoring and why embedding In Chip monitoring IP is an essential step to maximize performance and reliability and minimize power, or a combination of... » read more

Optimize Designs And Mitigate Thermal Threats In High-Current Automotive Applications


By Melika Roshandell, Cadence Design overview Current density increases at the PCB/package level result in local temperature increases known as hotspots. In addition to highlighting the heat generated locally around and underneath certain components at the PCB or IC package level due to component power consumption, the Celsius Thermal Solver can calculate the heat generated by the Joule ef... » read more

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