News

Digital photomultipliers challenge vacuum-tube photomultipliers 11/12/2009

Despite massive improvements in solid-state light sensors in recent years, the detection of extremely low light levels has remained stubbornly resistant to the incursion of solid-state devices. The problems have been how to deal with the excessive dark count once you integrate the photodiodes into a circuit and how to reduce the cost of the specialized processes that the diodes require.

Mentor assembles a test-yield fusion platform 11/2/2009

A pair of new yield-analysis tools kicks off a new fused test and yield product line.

Intel, Numonyx to describe stackable phase-change memory array 10/28/2009

Eliminating a diode from the cell, researchers develop a memory that lives entirely in the interconnect stack.

Fujitsu launches USB 3.0-to-SATA-bridge chip 10/8/2009

Fujitsu Microelectronics recently announced a 3.0-to-SATA (serial-advanced-technology-attachment)-bridge chip. The company intends the device to act as a connection between a USB (Universal Serial Bus) 3.0 cable and a SATA external-storage device.

Mentor unveils strategy at DAC 9/17/2009

Mentor Graphics announced its acquisition of Embedded Alley Solutions as a key component of its Android and embedded-Linux strategy last month at the Design Automation Conference in San Francisco.

Tanner EDA announces router, layout-device generator 9/3/2009

At the Design Automation Conference, which took place in July in San Francisco, Tanner EDA introduced the SDL (schematic-driven-layout) interactive autorouter and the DevGen layout-device generator. The company also announced that it is shipping Version 14.10 of its Tanner Tools Pro and HiPer Silicon products, which serve full-custom analog and MEMS (microelectromechanical-system) design.

Maskless copper deposition could slash metallization costs in ICs 9/3/2009

Whereas much rocket science goes into making the minimum-geometry metal lines at the bottom of the interconnect stack on an IC, no one pays much attention to making the upper metal layers on which the spacing is relaxed, the metal is thick, and some processes still use aluminum. A relatively new idea from Replisaurus could address those problems.

IBM Power7 architecture illustrates some issues for the rest of us 8/27/2009

By balancing execution speed, memory bandwidth and latency, and coherency overhead the Power7 architects have attempted to make possible systems that will scale up to 256 CPU cores without experiencing a sharp drop-off in performance-per-core. As such, the Power7 is not only a major stride in microprocessors for large systems, but a textbook on the lessons SOC designers will need to study in coming years.

Rotary-encoder IC meets all auto specs 8/20/2009

The AS5163 magnetic-rotary-encoder IC from austriamicrosystems satisfies the stringent automotive-IC-protection requirements in angle-sensing applications. The device provides overvoltage protection as high as 27V, and reverse-polarity protection withstands –18V reverse polarity at the supply pins.

ASIC demultiplexes to multiple displays from one DisplayPort signal 8/20/2009

HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) and DVI (digital-video interface) transmit video data as continuous bit streams, whereas DisplayPort transmits the data in packets and allows for asymmetric two-way transfers. If your application is simply connecting a graphics chip to a display, packetizing creates a lot of overhead for little real benefit.

Start-up offers dynamically reconfigurable logic technology 8/6/2009

Start-up Akya is offering IP (intellectual property) to allow IC designers to include reconfigurable logic on their ASSPs (application-specific standard products) or ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits). The company delivers both reconfigurable-logic fabric and IP blocks to execute commonly required functions on that fabric.

Iron particle in nanotube may offer archival storage 8/6/2009

Researchers continue to seek out some plausible application for carbon nanotubes. The latest effort, by a team at the University of California—Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Pennsylvania State University, has discovered that a multiwall nanotube containing a particle of iron might just be an effective archival storage device.

Accellera, Spirit Consortium merger hints at future of ESL design 6/11/2009

The merger aims to bridge the language-based design and IP-assembly worlds and will exploit the fact that the two organizations have been working in complementary areas of front-end design and verification.

Akya reveals dynamically reconfigurable logic technology 5/28/2009

IP-based offering reduces risk and increases flexibility of custom chip designs.

EUV prints critical layers for 22-nm SRAM 5/14/2009

IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Center) reports having used ASML’s EUV (extreme-ultraviolet) Alpha lithography tool to print the contact and metal patterns for a 22-nm-node SRAM cell—apparently, the first application of the tool for multiple layers at this density. The SRAM cell is both tiny—at 0.

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