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

Photonics Speeds Up Data Center AI


Photonics is playing an increasingly vital role in the acceleration of AI within data centers. The global market for optical components is already substantial, accounting for $17 billion in revenue last year. Historically, telecommunications — such as undersea cables and fiber-to-the-home — dominated demand. However, the datacom sector, especially AI-driven data centers, now accounts for... » read more

TSMC Tech Symposium 2025


TSMC held its North America Technology Symposium on Wednesday, April 23, 2025 at the Santa Clara Convention Center and presented update information on its relentless march to ever finer geometries and higher levels of scaling. Figure 1, below, shows TSMC’s latest advanced technology roadmap. Compared to the roadmap presented at last year’s tech symposium, the new roadmap shows the “Hig... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


To listen to the podcast version, click here. TSMC unveiled an unusually detailed roadmap at this week's North America Technology Symposium, including future architectures for 3D-ICs for high-performance computing and small, extremely low-power chips for AR/VR glasses, and two implementations of system-on-wafer. Fig. 1: TSMC's future packaging and stacking roadmap. Source: TSMC The ... » read more

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