Manufacturing Bits: June 12

By Mark LaPedus - 12 Jun, 2018 - Comments: 0

Elastic diamonds A group has developed a way to make elastic diamonds, enabling tiny diamond needles that can flex and stretch. Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the City University of Hong Kong and Nanyang Technological University have developed a process that enables elastic diamonds. Elastic diamonds could one day... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 9

By Mark LaPedus - 09 Jan, 2018 - Comments: 0

Two-photon lithography Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has extended the capabilities of a high-resolution 3D printing technique called two-photon lithography (TPL). TPL enables the development of 3D-printed objects. LLNL’s technology could enable 3D-printed embedded structures inside the body, such as stents, joint replacements or bone scaffolds. It could also one day be ... » read more

Exploring New Scaling Approaches

By Mark LaPedus - 19 Oct, 2017 - Comments: 0

At the recent SPIE Photomask Technology + Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography 2017 conference, Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss semiconductor technology with Tsu-Jae King Liu, the TSMC Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. More specifically, Liu discussed some of the new... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 19

By Mark LaPedus - 19 Sep, 2017 - Comments: 1

Ion implant lithography At a recent conference, the University of California at Berkeley presented more details about its efforts to develop a multiple patterning method using tilted ion implantation (TII) technology. TII is somewhat similar today’s self-aligned double patterning (SADP) processes in logic and memory. SADP and the follow-on technology, self-aligned quadruple (SAQP), enable... » read more

System Bits: March 11

By Ann Mutschler - 11 Mar, 2014 - Comments: 0

Colored diamonds: a superconductor’s best friend Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and UCLA have figured out that colored diamonds can measure the tiny magnetic fields in high-temperature superconductors, providing a new tool to probe these much ballyhooed but poorly understood materials. Diamond sensors will give us m... » read more

Design For Variability

By Ed Sperling - 24 Jun, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Faced with shrinking margins, manufacturing process fluctuations that could mean one more or one less atom in a transistor and proximity issues in layout the most advanced chipmakers have begun designing for variability. Rather than working with fixed numbers, such as voltage, power and area, the goal of DFV is basically averaging all of these numbers. While this includes som... » read more

Tech Talk: Saving Power By The Milliwatt

By Ed Sperling - 02 Apr, 2009 - Comments: 0

Jan Rabaey, head of UC Berkeley's Wireless Research Center and the author of a new book entitled, "Low Power Design Essentials," discusses how to generate small amounts of power and what can be done to reduce the amount of power needed for semiconductor design. [youtube vid=G0j1Sm8RCns] » read more

Newer posts →

Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer