October 2018 – EEJournal

Costs for Sub-20nm Wafers put Another Nail in Moore’s Law’s Coffin

October 15, 2018

IC Insights has just published the September Update to The 2018 McClean Report, and one figure (reproduced below) puts yet another nail into the coffin for poor old Moore’s Law. Now please take care. There’s a vertical line between the 200mm wafers on the left going down to 0.13 micron lithography and 300mm wafers on the right, going down to 20nm. Per-wafer costs more than doubled going from 0.13 microns to 90nm, but the available real estate on a 300mm wafer is more than twice that on a 200mm wafer, so the cost … Read More → "Costs for Sub-20nm Wafers put Another Nail in Moore’s Law’s Coffin"

Neural Networks are Finding a Place at the Adult’s Table

by Steven Leibson

October 14, 2018

The deep learning revolution is the most interesting thing happening in the electronics industry today, said Chris Rowen during his keynote speech at the Electronic Design Process Symposium (EDPS), held last month at the Milpitas headquarters of SEMI, the industry association for the electronics supply chain. “The hype can hardly be understated,” continued Rowen. Search “deep learning” on Google and you’ll already get more than three billion hits. (Well, I got 20M for “deep learning” and 451M for “artificial intelligence,” but still, that’s a lot.) “ … Read More → "Neural Networks are Finding a Place at the Adult’s Table"

AI for EDA: Rohit Sharma’s view from EDPS

by Steven Leibson

October 12, 2018

Rohit Sharma is the founder and CEO of Pairpath, an EDA company with a clear mission:

“Enable customers squeeze every pico-second of performance and every milli-watt of power by efficiently providing sign-off accurate models.”

At the recent Electronic Process Design Symposium (EDPS) held at SEMI’s HQ in Milpitas, Sharma discussed the role(s) that AI might play in EDA. He started by noting that AI/ML research now consumes more than 1% of the world’s R&D budget. (Other EDPS speakers … Read More → "AI for EDA: Rohit Sharma’s view from EDPS"

Micron announces $100M venture fund for AI and $1M AI research grant program

by Steven Leibson

October 11, 2018

Yesterday at an inaugural AI event called Insight’18, held at the ultramodern Pier 27 overlooking San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge, Micron Technology announced a $100M venture fund and a $1M academic research grant program, both dedicated to AI. Insight’18, spearheaded by Micron, included a day’s worth of presentations and panels devoted to the latest AI developments.

Why did Micron create a high visibility event around AI? Quite possibly because the company has tired of processors getting all of the white-hot AI limelight in article after article and event after event. From the … Read More → "Micron announces $100M venture fund for AI and $1M AI research grant program"