3D Integration Supports CIM Versatility And Accuracy


Compute-in-memory (CIM) is gaining attention due to its efficiency in limiting the movement of massive volumes of data, but it's not perfect. CIM modules can help reduce the cost of computation for AI workloads, and they can learn from the highly efficient approaches taken by biological brains. When it comes to versatility, scalability, and accuracy, however, significant tradeoffs are requir... » read more

Research Bits: November 6


Fast superatomic semiconductor Researchers from Columbia University created a fast and efficient superatomic semiconductor material based on rhenium called Re6Se8Cl2. Rather than scattering when they come into contact with phonons, excitons in Re6Se8Cl2 bind with phonons to create new quasiparticles called acoustic exciton-polarons. Although polarons are found in many materials, those in Re6Se... » read more

Why Curvy Design Now? Less Change Than You Think And Manufacturable Today


A curvilinear (curvy) chip, if magically made possible, would be smaller, faster, and use less power. Magic is no longer needed on the manufacturing side, as companies like Micron Technology are making photomasks with curvy shapes using state-of-the-art multi-beam mask writers today. Yet the entire chip-design infrastructure is based on the Manhattan assumption of 90-degree turns, even though i... » read more

Chip Industry Talent Shortage Drives Academic Partnerships


Universities around the world are forming partnerships with semiconductor companies and governments to help fill open and future positions, to keep curricula current and relevant, and to update and expand skills for working engineers. Talent shortages repeatedly have been cited as the number one challenge for the chip industry. Behind those concerns are several key drivers, and many more dom... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $15.5 billion in funding and loans for retooling existing automotive factories for the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) and supporting local jobs, plus a notice of intent for $3.5 billion in funding to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for EVs and the nation’s grid, and for battery materials and components that are currently imported... » read more

Security Research: Technical Paper Round-up


A number of hardware security-related technical papers were presented at the August 2023 USENIX Security Symposium. Here are some highlights with associated links. [table id=130 /] A complete listing of all papers presented at this summer's USENIX conference can be found here and here. The organization provides open access research, and the presentation slides and papers are free to the p... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


The AI chip market is booming. Gartner expects revenue for the year will hit $53.4 billion, up 20.9% from 2022. The firm predicts that number will grow to $119 billion by 2027.  In the consumer electronics market, the value of AI-enabled application processors will amount to $1.2 billion in 2023, up from $558 million in 2022. Germany will spend nearly €1 billion (~US$1.7B) over the next t... » read more

Microarchitectural Side-Channel Attacks And Defenses on NVRAM DIMMs


A new technical paper titled "NVLeak: Off-Chip Side-Channel Attacks via Non-Volatile Memory Systems" was published by researchers at UC San Diego, Purdue University, and UT Austin. This paper was included at the recent 32nd USENIX Security Symposium. Abstract: "We study microarchitectural side-channel attacks and defenses on non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) DIMMs. In this study, we first perform r... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Intel issued an advisory of a potential security vulnerability in some of its processors. The company recommends updating to the latest firmware version. NVIDIA unveiled its GH200 Grace Hopper platform, based on 144 Arm Neoverse cores and 282GB of HBM3e memory. Meanwhile, Chinese internet companies including Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba ordered about $5 billion worth of A800 proces... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Arm is helping to address the ongoing talent shortage through its newly announced Semiconductor Education Alliance, with a long list of partners, including Arduino, Cadence, Cornell University, Semiconductor Research Corp., STMicroelectronics,Synopsys, Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute, the All-India Council for Technical Education, and the University of Southampton. The Alliance... » read more

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