The further scaling of interconnect and via lithography for advanced nodes is challenged by the requirement to provide a process window that supports post-patterning critical dimension variations and mask overlay tolerances. At the recent international Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, TSMC presented … Read More
Technology Design Co-Optimization for STT-MRAM
Previous SemiWiki articles have described the evolution of embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) IP from (charge-based) eFlash technology to alternative (resistive) bitcell devices. (link, link)
The applications for eNVM are vast, and growing. For example, microcontrollers (MCUs) integrate non-volatile memory for … Read More
Demand for High Speed Drives 200G Modulation Standards
Right now, the most prevalent generation of Ethernet for data centers is 400 Gbps, with the shift to 800 Gbps coming rapidly. It is expected that by 2025 there will be 25 million units of 800 Gbps shipped. Line speeds of 100G are used predominantly for 400 Gbps Ethernet – requiring 4 lanes each. Initially 800 Gbps will simply … Read More
Advanced 2.5D/3D Packaging Roadmap
Frequent SemiWiki readers are no doubt familiar with the advances in packaging technology introduced over the past decade. At the recent International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, TSMC gave an insightful presentation sharing their vision for packaging roadmap goals and challenges, to address the growing… Read More
Webinar: AMS, RF and Digital Full Custom IC Designs need Circuit Sizing
My career started out by designing DRAM circuits at Intel, and we manually sized every transistor in the entire design to get the optimum performance, power and area. Yes, it was time consuming, required lots of SPICE iterations and was a bit error prone. Thank goodness times have changed, and circuit designers can work smarter … Read More
DAC 2021 – Cliosoft Overview
It’s been awhile since I really looked at what Cliosoft has to offer in the EDA tool space, so at the 58th DAC I stopped by their exhibit booth on Tuesday to visit with Karim Khalfan, VP of Application Engineering, and Simon Rance, VP of Marketing. Their booth had all of the hot market segments listed: Automotive, 5G, IoT, AI, … Read More
Heterogeneous Integration – A Cost Analysis
Heterogeneous integration (HI) is a general term used to represent the diverse possibilities for die technology incorporated into advanced 2.5D/3D packaging. At the recent International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, a team from Synopsys and IC Knowledge presented data from analyses of future potential… Read More
Methodology for Aging-Aware Static Timing Analysis
At the recent Design Automation Conference, Cadence presented their methodology for incorporating performance degradation measures due to device aging into a static timing analysis flow. [1] (The work was a collaborative project with Samsung Electronics.) This article reviews the highlights of their presentation.
Background… Read More
Delivering Systemic Innovation to Power the Era of SysMoore
With the slowing down of Moore’s law , the industry as a whole has been working on various ways to maintain the rate of growth and advancements. A lot has been written up about various solutions being pursued to address specific aspects. The current era is being referred to by different names, SysMoore being one that Synopsys uses.… Read More
DAC 2021 – Taming Process Variability in Semiconductor IP
Tuesday at DAC was actually my very first time attending a technical session, and the presentation from Nebabie Kebebew, Siemens EDA, was called, Mitigating Variability Challenges of IPs for Robust Designs. There were three presentations scheduled for that particular Designer, IP and Embedded Systems track, but with the COVID… Read More


The Risk of Not Optimizing Clock Power