Articles – Page 36

Boosting the Efficiency and Performance of Silicon Chips with a Special Epitaxial Layer

October 3, 2023

Did you ever see the Doctor Who episode “Vincent and the Doctor”? This starts with the Doctor and his companion, Amy, visiting a Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. When they spot an alien creature in one of Vincent’s paintings, they travel back in time to find out what’s happening and sort things out.

We now regard Vincent as being an artistic genius, but his paintings were largely unappreciated and rejected by critics and the public while he was alive. In … Read More → "Boosting the Efficiency and Performance of Silicon Chips with a Special Epitaxial Layer"

Edward Keonjian: The High-IQ, Armenian-American Forrest Gump of Microelectronics, Part 4

by Steven Leibson

October 2, 2023

The launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, was a red flag to the US government. It signaled the USSR’s development of ICBMs that could deliver nuclear weapons across oceans. In response, the US government ramped up its own ICBM program with the completion of the Atlas and development of the Titan missile systems. American Bosch Arma benefitted from those programs by winning the contract to develop an inertial guidance system for the Titan missile, which progressed so quickly that it was retrofitted to the Atlas missile as well. That contract created the … Read More → "Edward Keonjian: The High-IQ, Armenian-American Forrest Gump of Microelectronics, Part 4"

Is This the Ultimate Chiplet Interconnect Technology?

by Max Maxfield

September 28, 2023

I love the smell of fresh chiplets in the morning, but I bet you hear that all the time these days. As you may recall, rather than creating a semiconductor device as a single humongous piece of silicon, the latest and greatest alternative is to take multiple dice, mount them on a common substrate, and present everything in a single package, which may be referred to as a “multi-die system.” In this case, the dice are commonly referred to as “chiplets” or “tiles.”

Like many things, this sounds easy if … Read More → "Is This the Ultimate Chiplet Interconnect Technology?"

Edward Keonjian: The High-IQ, Armenian-American Forrest Gump of Microelectronics, Part 3

by Steven Leibson

September 27, 2023

Having survived World War II, a difficult emigration to the United States, a rat- and bug-infested apartment, and numerous job rejections, Edward Keonjian was finally working at the cutting edge of electronics for 1953. He was a development engineer at the Semiconductor Applications Unit of the General Electric (GE) Electronics Laboratory in Syracuse, New York and had just co-published a book titled Principles of Transistor Circuits with eight other authors. The book was edited by the Semiconductor Applications Unit’s manager, Richard Shea, and it encapsulated everything … Read More → "Edward Keonjian: The High-IQ, Armenian-American Forrest Gump of Microelectronics, Part 3"

Edward Keonjian: The High-IQ, Armenian-American Forrest Gump of Microelectronics, Part 2

by Steven Leibson

September 25, 2023

When Edward Keonjian arrived in New York City from war-torn Europe in February 1947, he could speak Armenian, Russian, and German, but he was not yet able to speak more than a couple of words in English. Even though he had the equivalent of a PhD in radio communications from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute (LETI), his lack of English skills relegated him to menial jobs. He cleaned stores and washed cars. Meanwhile, the World Church Service had placed the Keonjian family in an inexpensive and very odd sort of hotel. In his autobiography, Survived to Tell, Keonjian … Read More → "Edward Keonjian: The High-IQ, Armenian-American Forrest Gump of Microelectronics, Part 2"

Boosting Semiconductor Fab Productivity by up to 20 Percent!

by Max Maxfield

September 21, 2023

In the microelectronics industry, the term “semiconductor fabrication plant” (a.k.a. “semiconductor fab”; sometimes called a “foundry”) is a factory for semiconductor device fabrication. In layman’s terms, this is where they build the silicon chips that power our modern world. Even a small fab can easily cost $1 billion. Spending $3 to $5 billion is not uncommon, and you can splash a lot more cash than this without straining yourself if you are so inclined.

Chiplets for the Unwashed Masses

by Max Maxfield

September 19, 2023

Do you ever get the feeling you are sitting on the cusp of a new era, metaphorically speaking? That’s the way I currently feel with respect to chiplets (I only wish I was gowned in garb apposite to the occasion).

The concept of chiplets has been around for some time, and they’ve been in use for the past few years, but only by big players like Intel, for example, who have humongous resources and who can control every aspect of chiplet development and deployment. Now it seems that … Read More → "Chiplets for the Unwashed Masses"

Edward Keonjian: The High-IQ, Armenian-American Forrest Gump of Microelectronics, Part 1

by Steven Leibson

September 18, 2023

The 1986 novel Forrest Gump and the 1994 movie based on the novel depicted a man who was present at many significant events in the 20th century. In that same way, Edward Keonjian managed to be closely associated with many developments in electronics, especially microelectronics. The fictitious character Forrest Gump supposedly had a low IQ, but he loved meeting people. The very real Edward Keonjian also loved meeting people, and he clearly had very high intelligence. … Read More →

Doing the Time Warp with Calibre DesignEnhancer

by Max Maxfield

September 14, 2023

When I worked on my first ASIC deep in the mists of time that we used to call the 1980s, we employed a traditional “waterfall” model for our design and verification flows. In this case, any activities associated with the project were broken down into linear sequential phases, where each phase depended on the deliverables from the previous one.

The term “shift left” first entered our collective consciousness … Read More → "Doing the Time Warp with Calibre DesignEnhancer"

Ray Holt and the Lost History of the First Multi-Chip Microprocessor

by Steven Leibson

September 11, 2023

During a Zoom meeting of the Computer History Museum’s (CHM) SemiSIG earlier this year, our fearless leader Doug Fairbairn mentioned that he was having trouble contacting Ray Holt to arrange a recording of his oral history. CHM’s SemiSIG records oral histories of past and present luminaries in the semiconductor industry, and Holt’s history is a rich one. After getting his EE degree at Cal Poly in 1968, Holt joined the team at Garrett AiResearch that designed the CADC (Central Air Data Computer), which was the world’s first digital electronic flight computer. It was an … Read More → "Ray Holt and the Lost History of the First Multi-Chip Microprocessor"