From the Editor
Are we about to enter a world of weird effects in silicon? Or will silicon even survive? (Yes, we have heard that question before.) At the summer forecast meeting of analyst company Future Horizons, Europe Editor Dick Selwood heard about some of the different approaches to continuing to cram more and more transistors into a chip. In addition, Mentor takes a look at how DRC and DFM checks break down below 28nm when done in the traditional design-then-verify flow, giving us their view on a better way to work. We've extended the deadline for the final Journal Forum Posting competition. Post something creative and you could walk away with the final $500 amazon.com gift certificate! Thanks as always for reading. We encourage you to share your thoughts in the new easier-to-use comments area right below the articles; don't be shy. Or you can get a lively discussion going on our new FORUMS. Bryon Moyer - Editor, IC Journal
Industry News
September 02, 2010
EDA Solutions and Europractice host mixed-signal ASIC design training course
Energy Micro tool instantly resolves MCU pin conflicts
September 01, 2010
C-to-FPGA Integration Accelerates Prototyping 10X
August 31, 2010
EMA TimingDesigner 9.25 Automates Static Timing Analysis Process
Technical Education on Digital Signal Processing, FPGAs and Embedded Processors
HDL Works Presents 'IO Checker 2.0'
August 30, 2010
SoCIP Road Shows to Stop at Shenzhen, Chengdu and Xi’an
S2C Announces Virtex-6 Based 4th Generation Rapid SoC Prototyping Solution
August 26, 2010
CML Launch New Enhanced Audio Scrambler and Sub-Audio Signalling Processor IC
August 25, 2010
Synopsys DesignWare SATA IP Enables First-Pass Silicon Success for Global Unichip Corporation
STARC, Calypto and Virage Logic Break New Ground with Industry’s Lowest Power Design Flow
Feature Articles
Science Fiction or Black Art?
Once upon a time, and a long time ago it was, a company in what was struggling to be known as Silicon Valley (Germanium Gulch never really caught on) had an order for a discontinued product. The customer was pressing, so the company ran a batch of wafers (probably one-inch wafers), but none of the end product worked. A second batch was also DoA. After a great deal of head-scratching, someone remembered that since the last successful production run, clean room staff had started wearing gloves. A third batch went through the line without gloves, and there was enough working product to meet the customer’s needs. One possible explanation was that sodium chloride emitted by the operators’ hands (even though wafers were handled with tweezers) created just enough doping at some stage to tip the process into yielding.
In those days, process development was one part technology and several parts black art. Things are different today, of course. But, if Future Horizons’ CTO, Mike Bryant, is correct, we may be going into even more weird realms of the unknown anytime soon. Read More
When Things Look Suspicious
ASIC Analytic Looks for Anomalies in the EDIF File
Keeping Things Safe for Work
MethodICs Introduces ProjectIC for Enterprise Project Data Management
Passing the Test
Vennsa Tries to Figure Out Who Screwed Up
Power vs. Thermal
Docea Makes the Peace
Retrograde Cycloid
From Vertical to Horizontal to Vertical
What's next? Or is anything next?
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