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 … Read More → "Boosting Semiconductor Fab Productivity by up to 20 Percent!"
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 … Read More → "Chiplets for the Unwashed Masses"
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 … Read More → "Doing the Time Warp with Calibre DesignEnhancer"
My engineering career started shortly after video games appeared. The first arcade video game, Computer Space, was developed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney and released in 1971. Bushnell and Dabney founded Atari the following year. Computer Space was inspired by another computer game, Spacewar!, which MIT students had programmed into a Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer in 1962. Bushnell saw a version of Spacewar! running on a … Read More → "“The Game Console 2.0” Serves up Images of 123 Home Video Game Consoles Across 9 Generations"
As I’ve mentioned several times on previous occasions, when I commenced my degree course in Control Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University in England circa the mid-1970s, the only computer available to the students that physically resided in the engineering department building was a room-sized analog beast. In this case, we implemented our algorithms using plug-in cables to connect the various analog functions. …
Read More → "Blumind Bodes AI For Everyone, Everywhere"
