The overwhelming majority of transistors produced in the world are used in memory cells, either as the memory itself (Flash, SRAM), or as the access device (DRAM). Yet, it is not necessary to have a transistor in every memory cell. In 2015, 3D XPoint, the first major product based on transistor-less memory cells, was announced [1].
State-of-the-art chips will always include some portions which are memory arrays, which also happen to be the densest portions of the chip. Arrayed features are the main targets for lithography evaluation, as the feature pitch is well-defined, and is directly linked to the cost scaling (more features per wafer) from generation… Read More
For decades development work on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) was done on traditional CPUs and memory configurations. Now that we are in the “hockey stick” upturn in deployment of AI and ML, the search is on for the most efficient types of processing architectures. The result is a wave of development for… Read More
If you are designing an SOC for an IoT application and looking to minimize power consumption, there are a lot of choices. However, more often than not, looking at reducing SRAM power is a good place to start. SRAMs can consume up to 70% of an IC’s power. SureCore, a leading memory IP supplier, offers highly optimized SRAM instances … Read More
Life is full of convenience-security tradeoffs. Sometimes these are explicit, where you get to make an active choice about how secure or insecure you want things to be. Other times we are unaware of the choices we are making, and how risky they are for the convenience provided. If you leave your bike unlocked, you can expect it to be… Read More
In the wake of TSMC’s recent Open Innovation Platform event, I spoke to Frank Ferro, Senior Director of Product Management at Rambus. His presentation on advanced memory interfaces for high-performance systems helped to shed some light on the evolution of system memory for leading edge applications. System implementers now… Read More
At the Imec technology forum in Belgium Gouri Sankar Kar and Arnaud Furnemont presented memory and storage perspectives and I also got to interview Arnaud. Arnaud leads overall memory development at Imec and personally leads NAND and DNA research.
Memory research is focused on power, energy, speed and cost with energy and throughput… Read More
Artificial Intelligence based systems are driving a metamorphosis in computing, and consequently precipitating a large shift in SOC design. AI training is often done in the cloud and has requirements for handling huge amounts of data with forward and backward data connections. Inference usually occurs at the edge and must be… Read More
When I started dabbling in hardware again for fun using Arduinos about five years ago, it had been a long time since I had played with microprocessor chips. The epiphany for me was seeing how easy it was to load programs onto the onboard flash on something like an Atmel AVR using the SPI interface. My previous experience decades early… Read More
In life, there are some things that just go together. Imagine the world without peanut butter and jelly, eggs and potatoes, telephones and voicemail, or the internet and search engines. In the world of computing there are many such examples – UARTS and FIFO’s, processor cores and GPU’s, etc. Another trait all these things have is… Read More
