At the recent Hot Chips conference, Intel® unveiled Clearwater Forest, its next-generation Xeon® 6 processor with efficiency cores (E-cores). The unveiling was made by Don Soltis, Xeon Processor Architect and Intel Fellow with over four decades of processor design experience and a long-standing contributor to the Xeon roadmap.… Read More
Podcast EP305: On Overview of imec’s XTCO Program with Dr. Julien Ryckaert
Dan is joined by Dr. Julien Ryckaert who joined imec as a mixed-signal designer in 2000, specializing in RF transceivers, ultra-low power circuit techniques, and analog-to-digital converters. In 2010, he joined imec’s process technology division in charge of design enablement for 3DIC technology. Since 2013, he oversees… Read More
Breaking out of the ivory tower: 3D IC thermal analysis for all
Todd Burkholder and Andras Vass-Varnai, Siemens EDA
As semiconductor devices become smaller, more powerful and more densely integrated, thermal management has shifted from an afterthought to a central challenge in modern IC design. In contemporary 3D IC architectures—where multiple chiplets are stacked and closely arrayed—power… Read More
PDF Solutions and the Value of Fearless Creativity
PDF Solutions has been around for over 30 years. The company began with a focus on chip manufacturing and yield. Since the beginning, PDF Solutions anticipated many shifts in the semiconductor industry and has expanded its impact with enhanced data analytics and AI. Today, the company’s impact is felt from design to manufacturing,… Read More
Streamlining Functional Verification for Multi-Die and Chiplet Designs
As multi-die and chiplet-based system designs become more prevalent in advanced electronics, much of the focus has been on physical design challenges. However, verification—particularly functional correctness and interoperability of inter-die connections—is just as critical. Interfaces such as UCIe or custom interconnects… Read More
XTCO: From Node Scaling to System Scaling
imec XTCO (Cross-Technology Co-Optimization) is the natural successor to DTCO and STCO in an era where no single layer of the stack can deliver scaling alone. Instead of optimizing devices, interconnect, packaging, architecture, and software in isolation, XTCO treats them as one tightly coupled system with a shared budget … Read More
From Two Dimensional Growth to Three Dimensional DRAM
Epitaxial stacks of silicon and silicon germanium are emerging as a key materials platform for three dimensional dynamic random access memory. Future DRAM will likely migrate from vertical channels to horizontally stacked channels that resemble the gate all around concept in logic. That shift demands a starter material made… Read More
Synopsys Webinar – Enabling Multi-Die Design with Intel
As we all know, the age of multi-die design has arrived. And along with it many new design challenges. There is a lot of material discussing the obstacles to achieve more mainstream access to this design architecture, and some good strategies to conquer those obstacles. Synopsys recently published a webinar that took this discussion… Read More
CoPoS is a Bigger Canvas for Chiplets and HBM
AI-Driven Verification: Transforming Semiconductor Design
In a DACtv session on July 9, 2025, Abhi Kolpekwar, Vice-President & General Manager at Siemens EDA, illuminated the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in addressing the escalating challenges of semiconductor design verification. The presentation underscored the limitations of traditional methods… Read More


Intel to Compete with Broadcom and Marvell in the Lucrative ASIC Business