Intel & Ansys Enable 14nm Chip Production

Intel & Ansys Enable 14nm Chip Production
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-20-2014 at 10:00 am

In the semiconductor industry, it feels great to hear about the process technology shrinking to lower nodes along with innovative transistor structures that offer major gains in PPA (Power, Performance and Area). However, it requires huge investment of capital, time and effort from foundries to conceptualize, prototype and… Read More


Five Things You Don’t Know About MunEDA

Five Things You Don’t Know About MunEDA
by Paul McLellan on 06-17-2014 at 3:00 pm

So first the one thing that you do know. MunEDA are based in Munich which makes them German. I have to confess that until I got involved helping them a bit with some marketing stuff that that was about all I knew about them too.

So now five things that you might not know:

1. MunEDA have a much wider customer list that you know and would even… Read More


FinFET Based Designs Made Easy & Reliable

FinFET Based Designs Made Easy & Reliable
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-15-2014 at 11:00 am

Although semiconductor manufacturing has taken off with FinFET based process technology which provides lucrative payoffs on performance improvement, power reduction and area saving in devices for high density and high performance SoC demand of modern era, apprehensions remain about its reliability due to reduced noise … Read More


High Sigma Yield Analysis and Optimization at DAC

High Sigma Yield Analysis and Optimization at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-02-2014 at 7:20 pm

When I hear the phrase “high sigma” I think of the EDA vendor Solido, however at DAC on Monday I visited another EDA company called MunEDAthat has several products of interest to transistor-level IC designers. I was able to speak with three different people from MunEDA and here’s what I learned.… Read More


Sidense NVM IP clears TSMC9000 at 28nm

Sidense NVM IP clears TSMC9000 at 28nm
by Don Dingee on 05-29-2014 at 7:00 pm

Maybe I’ve spent too many years whiffing solder flux fumes and absorbing doses of X-band radiation in anechoic chambers, but I’m a firm believer in the axiom: “Give me enough engineers, and I can get 10 of anything to work right, once.” We have to make this … fit into this … using only this stuff … is what legends are made of.… Read More


IC Power Noise Reliability for FinFET Designs

IC Power Noise Reliability for FinFET Designs
by Daniel Payne on 05-06-2014 at 9:07 am

Reliability for ICs is a big deal because the last thing that you want to do is ship a new part only to find out later in the field that there are failures not being caught by testing. I’ve already had two consumer products fail this year because of probable reliability issues: My MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM started rebooting caused… Read More


IC/Package/Board – Power, Noise and Reliability from ANSYS (Apache DA) at DAC

IC/Package/Board – Power, Noise and Reliability from ANSYS (Apache DA) at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 04-30-2014 at 10:04 am

ANSYS acquired Apache Design Automation back in June 2011and three years later the name “Apache” is being subdued in favor of using just ANSYS. One thing that I noticed right away was a DACfocus on having actual ANSYS customers talk about their hands-on experience using the EDA tools. The following seven customers… Read More


Stop TDDB from getting through peanut butter

Stop TDDB from getting through peanut butter
by Don Dingee on 01-24-2014 at 6:00 pm

There are a few dozen causes of semiconductor failure. Most can be lumped into one of three categories: material defects, process or workmanship issues, or environmental or operational overstress. Even when all those causes are carefully mitigated, one factor is limiting reliability more as geometries shrink – and it… Read More


Managing Heat for System Reliability

Managing Heat for System Reliability
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-17-2014 at 8:30 am

In most of the electronic equipments, semiconductor chips are a major source of heat generation. And in semiconductor designs several hardware and software techniques are being used to contain power dissipation; a major cause for heat. However due to multiple functionality being squeezed into small form factors, we continue… Read More


Mission Critical Role of Unmanned Systems – How to fulfill?

Mission Critical Role of Unmanned Systems – How to fulfill?
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-05-2014 at 11:30 am

Do we ever imagine what kind of severe challenges mission critical unmanned systems in air, land and underwater face? They are limited in space and size; have to be light in weight, flexible in different types of operations and at the same time rugged enough to work in extreme climatic conditions. That’s not enough; amidst these … Read More