AR/VR Glasses Taking Shape With New Chips


More augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) wearables are coming, but how they are connected, and where image and other data is processed, are still in flux. Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, for example, look like classic eyeglasses, but they rely on a tethered smart phone for such functions as taking pictures, AI voice assistance, and object identification. In contrast... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The U.S. Commerce Department is tightening controls on EDA software sold to China by imposing additional license requirements. EDA companies are assessing the impact. Details on how broad the restrictions will be are still pending. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will require Synopsys and Ansys to divest key software assets — including optical, photonic, and RTL power analysis tool... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Podcast: imec's roadmap and a one-on-one interview with the European research house's chief strategy officer. China's Xiaomi debuted an in-house-designed 10-core mobile SoC built on a 3nm process. The company did not identify the foundry. It also announced plans to invest 50 billion yuan (~$7B) over the next decade to develop high-end smartphone chips, as part of a 200 billion yuan (~$28B) c... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: May 20


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=432 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here. » read more

More Data, More Redundant Interconnects


The proliferation of AI dramatically increases the amount of data that needs to be processed, stored, and moved, accelerating the aging of signal paths through which that data travels and forcing chipmakers to build more redundancy into the interconnects. In the past, nearly all redundant data paths were contained within a planar chip using a relatively thick silicon substrate. But as chipma... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis. Newly proposed U.S. legislation called the Chip Security Act would use location verification tracking as a tool to help combat chip smuggling. This follows a report by the Economist that showed Taiwan exports of advanced chips to Malaysia in the first quarter has nearly reached 2024 totals, heightening concerns that China... » read more

Novel Thin Film Growth Technique Of A WBG Sulfide Semiconductor in BEOL Compatible Conditions (USC, LBNL, TSMC)


A new technical paper titled "Textured growth and electrical characterization of Zinc Sulfide on back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) compatible substrates" was published by researchers at USC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and TSMC. Abstract "Scaling of transistors has enabled continuous improvements in logic device performance, especially through materials engineering. However, surpassing ... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: May 13


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=430 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here.   » read more

A Route For More Efficient SOT-MRAM Designs (NTU, TSMC)


A new technical paper titled "Efficient Magnetization Switching via Orbital-to-Spin Conversion in Cr/W-Based Heterostructures" by researchers at National Taiwan University and TSMC. Abstract "A highly efficient spin–orbit torque (SOT) switching mechanism is crucial for the realization of practical SOT magnetic random-access memory (MRAM). This study proposes a Cr/W-based spin current sour... » read more

Three-Way Race To 3D-ICs


Intel Foundry, TSMC, and Samsung Foundry are scrambling to deliver all the foundational components of full 3D-ICs, which collectively will deliver orders of magnitude improvements in performance with minimal power sometime within the next few years. Much attention has been focused on process node advances, but a successful 3D-IC implementation is much more complex and comprehensive than just... » read more

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