Chipworks Inside Angle
Energy Audits by MEMS
As we slowly move towards a more energy-efficient lifestyle, one of the individual contributions we can make is to assess the energy that we actually burn through each day. Up here in the Great White North our provincial government supports household energy surveys, to encourage home-owners to reduce their fuel consumption, whether it be from oil, natural gas, or electricity. One of th ...... Read More
Comments (1)Samsung's Acronymic DRAM - RCAT we know, but ZAZ?
Our industry is almost as full of acronyms as the military, and the DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) business certainly contributes its share. A few years ago we had CUBs (Cell Under Bitline), and now we’ve evolved to COBs (Cell Over Bitline), and of course we’re all waiting for DRAMs stacked with TSVs (Through-Silicon Vias). In the capacitor, we have gone from PO ...... Read More
Comments (1)STMicroelectronics Becomes the Dominant Player in Consumer MEMS - Now They're Going for Gyros
One of the chip sectors that we watch on an ongoing basis, and in which we have analysed a fair few parts, is the MEMS sector; initially it was pressure sensors and automotive accelerometers, but in recent years MEMS devices have become ubiquitous in the high-tech toys that we all use, whether it be a mobile phone, a camera, or a gaming system. St. John Dixon-Warren (a.k.a. Sinjin) is our spe ...... Read More
Comments (0)NXP Gets a Win in Apple's iPad
Just for a change, something a bit less serious than my usual chip internals for the New Year, although we’re fairly well into it by now! Anyway, the Apple frenzy this week has cranked up to a new crescendo, so why not add a few more words? Like almost everyone else I know, I took in the iPad launch yesterday, and couldn’t resist looking at some of the discussions that sho ...... Read More
Comments (3)IEDM Next Week!
In a few days time the great and the good of the electron device world will be gathering in Baltimore for the 2009 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting. To quote the conference lead release, “IEDM is the world’s premier forum for the presentation of applied research in microelectronic, nanoelectronic and bioelectronic devices.” From my perspective, ...... Read More
Comments (2)Elpida Changes DRAM Capacitor Technology
As a break from the hyper-intensity of our Intel 32-nm analysis, I was scanning through some of the other chips we have been looking at recently. A couple of images caught my eye, without really knowing what they were: Without thinking about scale, what could we be looking at? A bunch of drinking straws? Some of those weird worms by the volcanic vents at the bottom of the Pacif ...... Read More
Comments (5)Intel's 32-nm Clarkdale Shows Many Changes
Recently we at Chipworks managed to get our hands on some of Intel’s hot (not to say smoking!) new 32-nm Clarkdale/Westmere microprocessors. Needless to say they went straight into the lab, so that we could get a look at the changes from the 45-nm high-k, metal gate (HKMG) generation. To be honest, I was expecting more or less a straightforward shrink of the earlier process, poss ...... Read More
Comments (4)DSLR Image Sensor Innovation – Who Is Challenging Canon and Nikon’s lead?
After discussing leading-edge logic processes in the last few weeks, I think it’s time to take a line from the Monty Python cult TV show: “And now, for something completely different.” (It’s hard to believe that show was 40 years ago — it’s still in re-runs!) My colleague Ray Fontaine has crafted a thoughtful piece about digital SLR cameras, one ...... Read More
Comments (0)TSMC Does HKMG On Its Own
Gate-last HKMG has continued to dominate my thinking over the last few days. The speculation in my last entry that Intel may have transferred HKMG technology to TSMC as part of the Atom agreement announced in March turns out to be just that, speculation. Since Tuesday I received an email from Intel definitively denying that any process technology had been transferred to TSMC. Ba ...... Read More
Comments (4)TSMC Goes Gate-Last Process for 28-nm Transistors – is it Intel-based?
I hadn’t intended my latest blog to be a follow-up on the last one about Intel’s high-k/metal gate (HKMG) technology, but yesterday’s announcement from TSMC is too much to resist. Up until now, Intel has been the only manufacturer touting the benefits of the gate-last technology, and the other leading-edge producers (including TSMC) have been promoting gate-first HKMG te ...... Read More
Comments (6)Will anyone catch up to Intel’s PMOS?
At an Intel analyst’s meeting last night here at Semicon West, Mark Bohr put up a slide showing the increase in transistor drive currents over the last few generations. What caught my eye was not so much the impressive increase in the numbers, but the way the gap has changed between NMOS and PMOS. After increasing slightly from the 130- to the 65-nm nodes, there is a dramatic narrowin ...... Read More
Comments (1)Mystery Wirebonds in Marvell Sheeva..
A few weeks ago we found this: It’s the CPU chip from a Marvell SheevaPlugTM plug computer. This is a gadget that plugs into a wall socket, designed to run network-based services that normally need a dedicated PC, but at a cost of about $100. It incorporates a 65-nm 1.2 GHz Marvell CPU with 512 MB each of flash and DRAM memory, and connects via Gigabit Ethernet as well as USB. ...... Read More
Comments (4)
