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Podcast EP82: The Critical Need for Reliability in Future Products

Podcast EP82: The Critical Need for Reliability in Future Products
by Daniel Nenni on 05-27-2022 at 10:00 am

Dan is joined by Charlie Slayman, technical leader at Cisco Systems working on reliability physics and risk assessment of advanced semiconductor technology. He is also the general chair of the International Reliability Physics Symposium, or IRPS which is the focus of the discussion.

Dan explores the rapidly growing application… Read More


The New Normal for Semiconductor Manufacturing

The New Normal for Semiconductor Manufacturing
by Daniel Nenni on 05-27-2022 at 6:00 am

200mm 300mm Semiconductor Capacity

One of the recent live events I attended was the 2022 GSA Silicon Leadership Summit on May 12th at the Santa Clara Convention Center (my favorite location). This was the first GSA live event in two years so it was a must attend gathering. This event targets semiconductor ecosystem executives (200+ people attended) so there were many… Read More


Methods for Current Density and Point-to-point Resistance Calculations

Methods for Current Density and Point-to-point Resistance Calculations
by Daniel Payne on 05-26-2022 at 10:00 am

ESD path min

IC reliability is an issue that circuit design engineers and reliability engineers are concerned about, because physical effects like high Current Density (CD) in interconnect layers, or high point-to-point (P2P) resistance on device interconnect can impact reliability, timing or Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) robustness.… Read More


Very Short Reach (VSR) Connectivity for Optical Modules

Very Short Reach (VSR) Connectivity for Optical Modules
by Kalar Rajendiran on 05-26-2022 at 6:00 am

Synopsys 112G Ethernet PHY IP for VSR

Bandwidth, latency, power and reach are always the key points of focus when it comes to connectivity. As the demand for more data and higher bandwidth connectivity continue, power management is gaining a lot of attention. There is renewed interest in pursuing silicon photonics to address many of these challenges. There are many… Read More


[WEBINAR] Secure your devices with PUF plus hardware root-of-trust

[WEBINAR] Secure your devices with PUF plus hardware root-of-trust
by Don Dingee on 05-25-2022 at 10:00 am

NVM secret key storage problems

It’s a hostile world we live in, and cybersecurity of connected devices is a big concern. Attacks are rising rapidly, and vulnerabilities get exploited immediately. Supply chains are complex. Regulations are proliferating. Secrets don’t stay secrets for long – in fact, the only secret in a system with open-source algorithms… Read More


Refined Fault Localization through Learning. Innovation in Verification

Refined Fault Localization through Learning. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 05-25-2022 at 6:00 am

Innovation New

This is another look at refining the accuracy of fault localization. Once a bug has been detected, such techniques aim to pin down the most likely code locations for a root cause. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue… Read More


3D IC Update from User2User

3D IC Update from User2User
by Daniel Payne on 05-24-2022 at 10:00 am

FO WLP min

Our smart phones, tablets, laptops and desktops are the most common consumer products with advanced 2.5D and 3D IC packaging techniques. I love seeing the product tear down articles to learn how advanced packaging techniques are being used, so at the User2User conference in Santa Clara I attended a presentation from Tarek Ramadan,… Read More


Sensing – Who needs it?

Sensing – Who needs it?
by Dave Bursky on 05-24-2022 at 6:00 am

Analog Bits Sensing SemiWiki

In a simple answer – everyone.  A keynote presentation “Sensing the Unknowns and Managing Power” by Mahesh Tirupattur, the Executive Vice President at Analog Bits at the recent Siemens User2User conference, discussed the need and application of sensors in computing and power applications. Why sense? As Mahesh explains, sensing… Read More


Unlocking PA design with predictive DPD

Unlocking PA design with predictive DPD
by Don Dingee on 05-23-2022 at 10:00 am

Predictive DPD virtual test bench

Next up in this series on modulated signals is an example of multi-dimensional EM design challenges: RF power amplifiers (PAs). Digital pre-distortion (DPD) is a favorite technique for linearizing PA performance. Static effects are easy to model and correct, but PAs are notorious for interrelated dynamic effects spoiling … Read More


Protecting High-Speed Interfaces in Data Centers with Security IP

Protecting High-Speed Interfaces in Data Centers with Security IP
by Kalar Rajendiran on 05-23-2022 at 6:00 am

SoCs Have Many Interfaces That Require Security

The never ending appetite for higher bandwidths, faster data interfaces and lower latencies are bringing about changes in how data is processed at data centers. The expansion of cloud to the network edge has introduced broad use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for extracting meaning from data. Cloud supercomputing… Read More