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A Vibrant Semiconductor Manufacturing Model for the US

A Vibrant Semiconductor Manufacturing Model for the US
by Scott Jewler on 06-30-2020 at 10:00 am

Semiconductor Revenue 2019

Having spent the last 30 years in semiconductor manufacturing, eight years of this living and working in Asia, it is both exciting and unsettling to see renewed political interest in the revitalization of this industry in the United States. Gone are the days of ‘It doesn’t make any difference whether a country makes computer chipsRead More


Qualcomm on Power Estimation, Optimizing for Gaming on Mobile GPUs

Qualcomm on Power Estimation, Optimizing for Gaming on Mobile GPUs
by Bernard Murphy on 06-30-2020 at 6:00 am

Phone game

I don’t look at the RTL power estimation topic too often these days, so I was interested to see that ANSYS still has a very strong position in this area. Qualcomm is using PowerArtist on one of the most demanding modern applications – mobile GPU power gaming. Mobile gaming heavily loads the GPU, so any optimization in that area will … Read More


Interview with Altair CTO Sam Mahalingam

Interview with Altair CTO Sam Mahalingam
by Daniel Nenni on 06-29-2020 at 10:00 am

altair cto sam mahalingam RGB

In this interview we talk with Sam Mahalingam, chief technology officer at Altair, about gaining a competitive edge with software that’s built to handle high-throughput workloads like chip design and electronic design automation (EDA). Altair is a global technology company providing solutions in product development, high-performance… Read 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


Intel Designs Chips to Protect from ROP Attacks

Intel Designs Chips to Protect from ROP Attacks
by Matthew Rosenquist on 06-28-2020 at 10:00 am

Intel Designs Chips to Protect from ROP Attacks

Intel comes late to the game but will be delivering an embedded defense for Return Oriented Programming (ROP) types of cyber hacks. I first blogged about this back in Sept of 2016. Yes, almost four years have passed and I had hoped it would see the light of day much earlier.

The feature, to debut in the Tiger Lake microarchitecture… Read More


The Stochastic Impact of Defocus in EUV Lithography

The Stochastic Impact of Defocus in EUV Lithography
by Fred Chen on 06-28-2020 at 6:00 am

The Stochastic Impact of Defocus in EUV Lithography

The stochastic nature of imaging has received a great deal of attention in the area of EUV lithography. The density of EUV photons reaching the wafer is low enough [1] that the natural variation in the number of photons arriving at a given location can give rise to a relatively large standard deviation.

In recent studies [2,3], it … Read More


CEO Interview: John O’Donnel of yieldHUB

CEO Interview: John O’Donnel of yieldHUB
by Daniel Nenni on 06-26-2020 at 10:00 am

John ODonnell CEO 150

Let me introduce John O’Donnell, CEO of yieldHUB. After earning a degree in microelectronics John spent 18 years at Analog Devices before founding yieldHUB in 2005. If anybody knows yield it is Analog Devices having shipped billions upon billions of chips, absolutely.

SemiWiki will be digging deeper into the technology… 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


Nobody Ever Lost Their Job for Spending too Much on Hardware Verification, Did They?

Nobody Ever Lost Their Job for Spending too Much on Hardware Verification, Did They?
by Daniel Nenni on 06-25-2020 at 6:00 am

Silicon Bug Cost Scenario

A paper was published last month on the Acuerdo Consultancy Services website authored by Joe Convey of Acuerdo and Bryan Dickman of Valytic Consulting. Joe and Bryan spent combined decades in the Semi and EDA World which means they have a great understanding of hardware bugs first hand, absolutely.

Here is a quick summary… 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