While pushing Moore’s Law’s boundaries in the world of 2D packaging, companies are starting to explore nontraditional approaches towards designing integrated circuit chips. 2D packaging is currently the most used method in designing chips in the industry, and while it leads in efficiency of power and performance, it lacks … Read More
cHBM for AI: Capabilities, Challenges, and OpportunitiesAI’s exponential growth is transforming semiconductor design—and memory…Read More
Prompt Engineering for Security: Innovation in VerificationWe have a shortage of reference designs to…Read More
Musk's new job as Samsung Fab Manager - Can he disrupt chip making? Intel outside- Musk chip lifeline to Samsung comes with…Read More
Enabling the Ecosystem for True Heterogeneous 3D IC DesignsThe demand for higher performance, greater configurability, and…Read More
EUV is coming but will we need it?
I have written multiple articles about this year’s SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference describing all of the progress EUV has made in the last year. Source power is improving, photoresists are getting faster, prototype pellicles are in testing, multiple sites around the world are exposing wafers by the thousands and more. … Read More
Making PLM Actually Work for for IC Design
The topic of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) conjures up images of usage on airplanes, tanks and cars. That’s because it was developed decades ago to help make product development and delivery more efficient for big expensive manufactured products. It worked well for its intended markets by combining and managing all the … Read More
Multiple Facets of Cyber Security Workshop!
Security is one of the new categories we track and it is keeping SemiWiki very busy. Security in itself, as a result of the FBI vs Apple comedy routine, but also security across the EDA, IP, ARM, Mobile, IoT, and Automotive categories. … Read More
2.5D supply chain takes HBM over the wall
SoC designers have hit the memory wall head on. Although most SoCs address a relatively small memory capacity compared with PC and server chips, memory power consumption and bandwidth are struggling to keep up with processing and content expectations. A recent webinar looks at HBM as a possible solution.… Read More
Neural Networks Poised to Make Big Changes in Our World
Probably the most interesting thing about Neural Networks is how they can be used for complex recognition tasks that we as people can easily perform but we might have a lot of trouble explaining how. One very good example of a problem that Neural Networks can tackle is determining when people are making a fake smile. Intuitively we… Read More
Custom Layout Productivity Gets a Boost
In the 1970’s, when Moore’s Law was still in its infancy, Bill Lattin from Intel published a landmark paper [1]. In it he identified the need for new design tools and methods to improve layout productivity, which he defined as the drawn and verified number of transistors per day per layout designer. He said existing … Read More
Silicon Photonics – Back to the Future – Part Deux?
I cut my teeth in silicon IC design at Texas Instruments during the early 1980’s working on what would eventually become the ASIC and Fabless IC industries that enabled the explosive growth of the electronics industry over the last three decades. Of late I’ve become involved in the silicon photonics space and I am getting an incredible… Read More
Hyundai Artificial Intelligence Connected Car Insights from Patents
Hyundai announced its plan to develop smart car implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and V2X (vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I)) communication capability. US9159231 illustrates that Hyundai smart car will collect and transmit neighboring traffic information through the V2V communication.… Read More
Roger Rabbit Redux – Self-Driving Car Edition
With General Motors investing $500M in Lyft and buying Cruise Automation (aftermarket self-driving car technology) for $1B, there are some people speculating that the company may be recreating its mid-prior-century effort to monopolize mass transportation. In the 1940’s, National City Lines and Pacific City Lines,… Read More
Musk’s new job as Samsung Fab Manager – Can he disrupt chip making? Intel outside