I would contend there is no job quite like working as a support engineer for a simulation tool like Ansys HFSS. Such a role forces an engineer to understand technology in breadth and depth like no other because HFSS is applied to such a broad range of applications and products throughout the world. My own introduction to HFSS began … Read More





Alchip is Painting a Bright Future for the ASIC Market
I’ve spent most of my career in the ASIC business. In 2003, Gartner predicted the ASIC market would grow to $16.9B. During that time, there were a number of startups building ASICs, but the applications were a bit specialized and aimed at new markets. Consequently, there was a lot of risk to build a chip startup and many ASICs either… Read More
Ferroelectric Hafnia-based Materials for Neuromorphic ICs
The ferroelectric effect in materials has been exploited to fabricate (fab) reliable Ferroelectric Random Access Memories (FRAM) Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) ICs for over 20 years. Recent years have seen have seen a breakthrough in discovering ferroelectric properties in Hafnium Oxide (HfO2 or “hafnia”), a fab-friendly… Read More
Silicon Photonics Solutions Address Bandwidth, Reach, and Power Challenges
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged on GlobalFoundries’ silicon technologies supporting automotive radar applications. This time it is on GlobalFoundries’ silicon photonics technology which expects to find adoption in a broad spectrum of applications. The blog is based on listening to a technology presentation made by Dr. … Read More
Connecting System Design to the Enterprise
While systems design underpins the explosion in “smart everything”, it remains somewhat isolated from another explosion—the proliferation of tools for application lifecycle management (ALM). ALM tools are prevalent on the web, in the cloud and on our phones, to streamline product design and build, to track correspondence… Read More
“Kandou it”
In another departure from my chip design verification “beat,” I took a look at Kandou and like what I learned.
Kandou from Lausanne, Switzerland, boasts “Kandou It” as its tagline and as it should be if Kandou’s USB-C multi-protocol retimer solution with USB4 support is inside next-gen laptops, notebooks, desktops, tablets and… Read More
Highlights of the TSMC Technology Symposium 2021 – Automotive
At the recent TSMC Technology Symposium, TSMC provided a detailed discussion of their development roadmaps. Previous articles have reviewed the highlights of silicon process and packaging technologies. The automotive platform received considerable emphasis at the Symposium – this article specifically focuses on the… Read More
Keynote from Google at CadenceLIVE Americas 2021
Last week, Cadence hosted its annual CadenceLIVE Americas 2021 conference. Four keynotes and eighty-three different talks on various topics were presented. The talks were delivered by Cadence, its customers and partners.
One of the keynotes was from Partha Ranganathan, VP and Engineering Fellow from Google. His talk was titled,… Read More
Highlights of the TSMC Technology Symposium 2021 – Packaging
The recent TSMC Technology Symposium provided several announcements relative to their advanced packaging offerings.
General
3DFabricTM
Last year, TSMC merged their 2.5D and 3D package offerings into a single, encompassing brand – 3DFabric.
2.5D package technology – CoWoS
The 2.5D packaging options are divided into the CoWoS… Read More
Highlights of the TSMC Technology Symposium 2021 – Silicon Technology
Recently, TSMC held their annual Technology Symposium, providing an update on the silicon process technology and packaging roadmap. This article will review the highlights of the silicon process developments and future release plans.
Subsequent articles will describe the packaging offerings and delve into technology … Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet