A couple of weeks ago, Xilinx and TSMC announced the production release of the Virtex-7 HT family, the industry’s first heterogeneous 3D ICs in production. With this milestone, all Xilinx 28nm 3D IC families are now in volume production. These 28nm devices were developed on TSMC’s Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS)… Read More
Tag: 3d-ic
GlobalFoundries and ARM
GlobalFoundries had several interesting things at the ARM TechCon last week. Firstly, GlobalFoundries won the best in show award in the chip design category recognizing the best-in-class technologies introduced since the last TechCon.
Earlier in the summer GlobalFoundries and ARM announced the ARM Cortex-A12 processor,… Read More
Hybrid Memory Cube Shipping
Today Micron announced that it is shipping 2GB Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) samples. The HMC is actually 5 stacked die connected with through-silicon-vias (TSVs). The bottom die is a logic chip and is actually manufactured for Micron in an IBM 32nm process (and doesn’t have any TSVs). The other 4 die are 4Gb DRAM die manufactured… Read More
TSMC’s 16FinFET and 3D IC Reference Flows
Today TSMC announced three reference flows that they have been working on along with various EDA vendors (and ARM and perhaps other IP suppliers). The three new flows are:
- 16FinFET Digital Reference Flow. Obviously this has full support for non-planar FinFET transistors including extraction, quantized pitch placement, low-vdd
Emerging Trend – Choose DRAM as per Your Design Need
Lately I was studying about new innovations in memory world such as ReRAM and Memristor. As DRAM (although it has become a commodity) has found its extensive use in mobile, PC, tablet and so on, that was an inclination too to know more about. While reviewing Cadence’s offering in memory subsystems, I came across this whitepaperwhich… Read More
What does 3D IC, FinFETs, and EUV have in common?
They are three of the top trending terms on SemiWiki and three of the hot topics at this year’s Semicon West:
In its 43rd year, SEMICON West is the flagship annual event for the global microelectronics industry. It is the premier event for the display of new products and technologies for microelectronics design and manufacturing,… Read More
A bird told me the EDPS Monterey Conference was a great success
The 20th annual Electronic Design Process Symposium (EDPS) held April 18-19 at the Monterey Beach Hotel in Monterey California was an unqualified success. I know this because a bird (seagull?) sitting on the window sill of the conference room was so captivated by the fascinating insight provided by a number of luminaries that … Read More
3D IC: Are We There Yet?
For the last few years, thru silicon via (TSV) based ICs have been looming in the mist of the future. Just how far ahead are they? Xiliinx famously has a high-end gate-array in production on a 2.5D interposer, Micron has a memory cube, TSMC has done various things in 3D that it calls CoWoS (chip on wafer on substrate), Qualcomm have been… Read More
TSMC to Talk About 10nm at Symposium Next Week
Given the compressed time between 20nm and 16nm, twelve months versus the industry average twenty four months, it is time to start talking about 10nm, absolutely. Next Tuesday is the 19th annual TSMC Technology Symposium keynoted of course by the Chairman, Dr. Morris Chang.
Join the 2013 TSMC Technology Symposium. Get the latest… Read More
How Can You Work Better with Your Foundry?
The fabless revolution in the digital semiconductor industry is no more, with just a few integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) remaining on the playing field, it is now the normal way to do business. However, the learning curve for each new process node continues as it always has, with a host of new technical challenges for the … Read More