High-speed communication is a critical component for many applications, most notably in the data center. The serializer/deserializer physical interface, or SerDes PHY is the backbone of many different forms of high-speed communication for this application. Use cases include on chip, between chips, between boards and racks… Read More
VLSI Symposium 2020 – Imec Buried Power Rail
The 2020 VLSI Technology Symposium was held as a virtual conference from June 14th through June 19th. At the symposium Imec gave an interesting paper on Buried Power Rails (BPR) and I had a chance to interview one of the authors, Anshul Gupta.
As logic devices continue to scale down metal pitch is reaching a limit. Imec defines a pitch… Read More
How yieldHUB Helps Bring a New Product to Market
Collecting and analyzing semiconductor test data is a subject that holds a special place for me. Developing a factory data collection and analysis system was my first job out of school. The company was RCA, and the factories were in Findlay, Ohio (analog/mixed signal) and West Palm Beach, Florida (digital). There was a pilot… Read More
Thermo-compression bonding for Large Stacked HBM Die
Summary
Thermo-compression bonding is used in heterogeneous 3D packaging technology – this attach method was applied to the assembly of large (12-stack and 16-stack) high bandwidth memory (HBM) die, with significant bandwidth and power improvements over traditional microbump attach.
Introduction
The rapid growth of heterogeneous… Read More
The Official SemiWiki Virtual DAC 2020 Must See List!
This is going to be a record setting year for DAC content and attendance, absolutely!
My first DAC was in 1984 in Albuquerque New Mexico, right out of College, and I married my beautiful wife two months later. Thirty six DAC’s later I have four grown children, grandchildren, and the number one semiconductor design portal in the world.… Read More
A tour of Cliosoft’s participation at DAC 2020 with Simon Rance
As chip complexity grows, so does the need for a well-thought-out design data management strategy. This is a hot area, and Cliosoft is in the middle of it. When I was at eSilicon, we used Cliosoft technology to manage the design and layout of high-performance analog designs across widely separated design teams. The tool worked… Read More
SystemC Methodology for Virtual Prototype at DVCon USA
DVCon was the first EDA conference in our industry impacted by the pandemic and travel restrictions in March of this year, and the organizers did a superb job of adjusting the schedule. I was able to review a DVCon tutorial called “Defining a SystemC Methodology for your Company“, given by Swaminathan Ramachandran… Read More
A Tour of This Year’s DAC IP Track with Randy Fish
DAC is a complex event with many “moving parts”. While the conference has gone virtual this year (as all events have), the depth of the event remains the same. The technical program has always been of top quality, with peer-reviewed papers presented across many topics and across the world. This is also the oldest part of DAC, dating… Read More
Contact over Active Gate Process Requirements for 5G
Summary
A recent process enhancement in advanced nodes is to support the fabrication of contacts directly on the active gate area of a device. At the recent VLSI 2020 Symposium, the critical advantages of this capability were highlighted, specifically in the context of the behavior of RF CMOS devices needed for 5G designs.
Introduction… Read More
Optimizing Chiplet-to-Chiplet Communications
Summary
The growing significance of ultra-short reach (USR) interfaces on 2.5D packaging technology has led to a variety of electrical definitions and circuit implementations. TSMC recently presented the approach adopted by their IP development team, for a parallel-bus, clock-forwarded USR interface to optimize power/performance/area… Read More


AI RTL Generation versus AI RTL Verification