The imec technology forum was held in Belgium last week. At the forum I had a chance to sit down with Gary Patton the CTO of GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) for an interview and he also presented “Enabling Connected Intelligence – Technology innovation: Enablers for an intelligent future” at the forum. In this article … Read More
Top 10 Highlights from the Samsung Foundry Forum
Samsung Foundry recently held their annual technology forum in Santa Clara CA. The forum consisted of: presentations on advanced and mainstream process technology roadmaps; the IP readiness for those technology nodes; a review of several unique package offerings; and, an informal panel discussion with IP designers and EDA… Read More
Welcome DDR5 and Thanks to Cadence IP and Test Chip
Will we see DDR5 memory (device) and memory controller (IP) in the near future? According with Cadence who has released the first test chip in the industry integrating DDR5 memory controller IP, fabricated in TSMC’s 7nm process and achieving a 4400 megatransfers per second (MT/sec) data rate, the answer is clearly YES !
Let’s come… Read More
SPICE Model Generation by Machine Learning
It was 1988 when I got into SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis)while I was characterizing a 1.5 μm Standard cell library developed by students at my Alma-Mata Furtwangen University in Germany. My professor Dr. Nielinger was not only my advisor he also wrote the first SPICE bible in German language. At that… Read More
TSMC Technologies for IoT and Automotive
At TSMC 2018 Silcon Valley Technology Symposium, Dr Kevin Zhang, TSMC VP of Business Development covered technology updates for IoT platform. The three growth drivers in this segment namely TSMC low power, RF enhancement and embedded memory technology (MRAM/RRAM) reinforced both progress and growth in global semiconductor… Read More
TSMC Technologies for Mobile and HPC
During TSMC 2018 Technology Symposium, Dr. B.J. Woo, TSMC VP of Business Development presented market trends in the area of mobile applications and HPC computing as well as shared TSMC progress in making breakthrough efforts in the technology offerings to serve these two market segments.
Both 5G and AI are taking the center stage… Read More
Top 10 Highlights of the TSMC 2018 Technology Symposium
Here are the Top 10 highlights from the recent TSMC 2018 Technology Symposium, held in Santa Clara CA. A couple of years ago, TSMC acknowledged the unique requirements of 4 different market segments, which has since guided their process development strategy — Mobile, High-Performance Computing (HPC), Automotive, and… Read More
Samsung 10nm 8nm and 7nm at VLSIT
I got a tip sheet today for the upcoming 2018 Symposia on VLSI Technology & Circuits to be held June 19th through 21st in Honolulu, Hawaii. There is some interesting information on Samsung’s 10nm, 8nm and 7nm processes in the tip sheet:… Read More
Peering Over the Timing Edge
I wrote recently about a yield problem which mobile vendors have been finding for devices built in advanced technologies. This was a performance issue (the devices worked fine at lower clock speeds), pointing to a discrepancy in some devices between predicted and observed timing. These were experienced design teams, using state… Read More
imec and Cadence on 3nm
One of the more frequent questions I get, “What is next after FinFETs?” is finally getting answered. Thankfully I am surrounded by experts in the process technology field including Scotten Jones of IC Knowledge. I am also surrounded by design enablement experts so I really am the man in the middle which brings us to a discussion between… Read More
Relaxation-Aware Programming in ReRAM: Evaluating and Optimizing Write Termination