For several years now, TSMC has run increasingly sophisticated IP validation. Ramping a new process as a foundry requires a number of things to all come together almost simultaneously: the process, of course, and some designs to run and start to recover the huge capital investment a modern fab entails. With many SoCs having over… Read More
Secure at any IoT deed
In his classic book “Unsafe at Any Speed”, Ralph Nader assailed the auto industry and their approach to styling and cost efficiency at the expense of safety during the 1960s. He squared up on perceived defects in the Chevrolet Corvair, but extended his view to wider issues such as tire inflation ratings favoring passenger comfort… Read More
SEMulator3D: GlobalFoundries Process Variation Reduction
At SEMICON last month, Rohit Pal of GlobalFoundries gave a presentation on their methodology for reducing process variation. It was titled Cpk Based Variation Reduction: 14nm FinFET Technology.
Capability indices such as Cpk is a commonly used technique to assess the variation maturity of a technology. It looks at a given parameter’s… Read More
Intel 14nm is NOT in Production Yet!
Okay, maybe I’m the only one questioning Intel 14nm yield but I think it will be an interesting discussion in the comments section. Here are the questions I would have asked Intel during their recent 14nm PR tour: Has the P1272 process been rolled out to the production fabs in OR, AZ, and Ireland? Is the process officially in production… Read More
FD-SOI at 14nm
At the recent Semicon West, Michel Haond of ST Microelectronics had a presentation on 14nm FD-SOI, or what they more lengthily call UTBB FD-SOI (which when you expand it all out comes to Ultra Thin Body and Buried-Oxide Fully Depleted Silicon on Insulator). When Chenming Hu (or whoever in his group) came up with the term FinFET it … Read More
When TSMC advocates FD-SOI…
I found a patent recently (May,14 2013) granted to TSMC “Planar Compatible FDSOI Design Architecture”, the following sentences, directly extracted from this patent, advertise FDSOI design better than a commercial promotion! “Devices formed on SOI substrates offer many advantages over their bulk counterparts, including… Read More
Intel Versus TSMC 14nm Processes
Intel has begun to release some details on their 14nm process. I thought it would be interesting to contrast what Intel has disclosed to TSMC’s 16nm process disclosure from last year’s IEDM (TSMC calls their 14nm process 16nm).
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Smart Meters
The Internet of Things (IoT) isn’t a single homogenous market but splits up into different segments with very different requirements. A lot of IoT markets are still in our future: next generation wearable medical devices, autonomous cars and more. One area where IoT has been going strong, long enough that it probably pre-dates… Read More
Should we pay the price of Innovation?
I agree that this question sounds stupid: nobody is forcing me to buy an innovative product, or even a gadget, if I don’t want to pay a high price, I just don’t buy the product. But it seems that some people don’t really think that way. The story is related to Qualcomm sales in China, and recently announced partnership with SMIC…
The Partnership… Read More
IBM thinks neural nets in chip with 4K cores
Neural networks have been the darlings of researchers since the 1940s, but have eluded practical hardware implementations on all but a small scale, or an enormous one given how many processing elements and interconnects are needed. To make significant brain-like decisions, one needs at least several thousand fairly capable… Read More
Things From Intel 10K That Make You Go …. Hmmmm