Supply Monitoring on 28nm & FinFET - The Challenges Posed

In this, the fourth instalment of the "Let's Talk PVT Monitoring" series I chat with Oliver King about voltage monitoring in modern SoCs and we discuss the challenges posed when monitoring supplies…

What to look out for when selecting an Embedded Process Monitor.

When selecting an embedded Process Monitor for use within your digital SoC it is important to make sure it ticks certain boxes.

Understanding how the chip has been made (process) has become…

Thermal Issues Associated with Modern SoCs - How Hot is Hot?

In this, the third instalment of the "Let's Talk PVT Monitoring" series Moortec CTO, Oliver King talks about the thermal issues associated with modern SoCs and ponders the question How Hot is…

When the first car rolled off his production line in 1913, Henry Ford would have already envisioned just how prolific the automobile would become. However, would he have foreseen the extent to which monitors and sensors would become critical to the modern…

My DAC started early last Monday morning with a delicious breakfast and a lively discussion with robaitken of ARM, Kelvin Low of Samsung Electronics, Glenn Dukes of Synopsys and skillfully moderated by synopsysphil. The team came together to discuss the…

Another important milestone was reached recently for TSMC  and ARM when the teams taped out at the end of December 2013 (see block diagram) the first 64 bit ARMv8 processors in a big.LITTLE configuration on TSMC’s leading edge manufacturing process…

Now that CES is done for another year, it is worth remembering that the diversity of solutions on display and the proliferation of new device experiences at ever lower costs is due to semiconductor vendors being able to leverage the enormous investments…

By chris.wright and Rupal Gandhi

We are part of the team that recently taped out a finFET testchip. It was one of our team’s first  experiences with finFETs and we saw firsthand the implementation differences from our familiar CMOS processes! We will cover…

Taking a major step forward for advanced-node semiconductor design, ARM and Cadence recently (April 4, 2013) announced the first implementation of an ARM® Cortex^TM-A57 processor on the TSMC 16nm FinFET manufacturing process. Here's a closer look…

Tri-gate or Fin-FET devices have been scrutinized for about 10 years and are considered a viable solution only when conventional planar MOS devices are not able to deliver the expected performance while keeping a low enough leakage current. When scaling…

Five years ago, ARM R&D Fellows Dr. Robert Aitken and David Flynn predicted [LS1] several low power design and implementation techniques which were discussed in detail in their book (co-authored by Michael Keating, Alan Gibbons and Kaijian Shi from…