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A Tour of This Year’s DAC IP Track with Randy Fish

A Tour of This Year’s DAC IP Track with Randy Fish
by Mike Gianfagna on 07-10-2020 at 10:00 am

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

Contact over Active Gate Process Requirements for 5G
by Tom Dillinger on 07-01-2020 at 6:00 am

frequency 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.

IntroductionRead More


Optimizing Chiplet-to-Chiplet Communications

Optimizing Chiplet-to-Chiplet Communications
by Tom Dillinger on 06-29-2020 at 6:00 am

bump dimensions

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


Multi-Vt Device Offerings for Advanced Process Nodes

Multi-Vt Device Offerings for Advanced Process Nodes
by Tom Dillinger on 06-26-2020 at 6:00 am

Ion Ioff

Summary
As a result of extensive focus on the development of workfunction metal (WFM) deposition, lithography, and removal, both FinFET and gate-all-around (GAA) devices will offer a wide range of Vt levels for advanced process nodes below 7nm.

Introduction
Cell library and IP designers rely on the availability of nFET and pFET… Read More


Key Semiconductor Conferences go Virtual

Key Semiconductor Conferences go Virtual
by Scotten Jones on 06-24-2020 at 2:00 pm

IEDM 2020 Logo

This last week the 2020 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits (VLSI Conference) was held as a virtual conference for the first time and it was announced today (June 24th) that this year’s IEDM conference will also be held as a virtual conference.

“The IEDM Executive Committee has decided that in the interest of prioritizing the… Read More


Design Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO) for sub-5nm Process Nodes

Design Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO) for sub-5nm Process Nodes
by Tom Dillinger on 06-23-2020 at 6:00 am

scaled metal resistance

Summary
Design Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO) analysis was pursued for library cell PPA estimates for gate-all-around (GAA) devices and new metallurgy options.  The cell design and process recommendations are a bit surprising.

Introduction
During the “golden years” of silicon technology evolution that applied Dennard… Read More


Seeing is Believing, the Benefits of Delta’s Low-Resolution Vision Chip

Seeing is Believing, the Benefits of Delta’s Low-Resolution Vision Chip
by Mike Gianfagna on 06-22-2020 at 6:00 am

Screen Shot 2020 06 15 at 10.16.13 AM

Presto Engineering recently held a webinar discussing vision chip technology – what a vision chip is, what are the applications and how can you optimize its use.  Samer Ismail, a design engineer at Presto Engineering with deep domain expertise in vision chip technology was the presenter.  Samer takes you on a very informative … Read More


Embedded MRAM for High-Performance Applications

Embedded MRAM for High-Performance Applications
by Tom Dillinger on 06-21-2020 at 10:00 am

embedded memory requirements

Summary
A novel spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive memory (STT-MRAM) IP offering provides an attractive alternative for demanding high-performance embedded applications.

Introduction
There is a strong need for embedded non-volatile memory IP across a wide range of applications, as depicted in the figure below.

The… Read More


DVCon 2020 Virtual Follow-Up Conference!

DVCon 2020 Virtual Follow-Up Conference!
by Daniel Nenni on 06-19-2020 at 6:00 am

DVCon 2020 Logo SemiWiki

As most of you know DVCon 2020 was our first conference to be cut short by the Pandemic. SemiWiki bloggers Bernard Murphy, Mike Gianfagna, and I were there with full schedules but at the last minute it was called off. It really was an eerie feeling, the emptiness of it all.

The rest of our EDA live events followed suit and went virtual … Read More


Fractal CEO Update 2020

Fractal CEO Update 2020
by Daniel Nenni on 06-16-2020 at 10:00 am

Fractal Technologies SemiWiki

Rene Donkers, the company’s Co-founder and CEO, started his EDA career at Sagantec where he became responsible for world wide customer support and operations management. Ten years ago, Rene and a handful of people noticed a need in the design community for a standardized (portable) IP Validation approach to replace internal… Read More