Mott Memristor Chaos could make Efficient AI

Congratulations to Suhas Kumar, John Paul Strachan, and R. Stanley Williams of Hewlett Packard Labs in Palo Alto for showing not just how to make a Mott memristor, but that you can create controlled chaos with one. “We showed that…

PCM + ReRAM = OUM as XPoint

The good people at TECHINSIGHTS have reverse-engineered an Intel “Optane” SSD to cross-section the XPoint cells within (http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331865&), so we have confirmation that the devices use chalcogenide glasses for both the switching layer and the selector diode. That the latter…

Moore’s Law Smells Funny

…maybe we need “Integrated Cleverness Law” “Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.” – Frank Zappa 1973 from Be-Bop Tango (Of The Old Jazzmen’s Church) Marketing is about managing expectations. IC marketing must position next-generation chips as adding significant…

Flagello to receive Zernike Award at SPIE Advanced Lithography

Donis Flagello, president, CEO, and COO of Nikon Research Corporation of America (NRCA), will be presented with the 2017 Frits Zernike Award for Microlithography on Monday 27 February during SPIE Advanced Lithography in San Jose, California. The award, presented annually…

XMC becomes YRST or Changjiang Storage

As reported by Digitimes, a major enterprise in Wuhan, China has broken ground on the first of three mega-fabs to produce 3D-NAND chips. The final fab name-plate may ultimately read XMC or YMTC or YRST or possibly Changjiang Storage (not…

China to be 15% of World Fab Capacity by 2018

Currently there are eight Chinese 300mm-diameter silicon IC fabs in operation as 2016 comes to a close. Chinese IC fab capacity now accounts for approximately 7% of worldwide 300mm capacity, as reported by VLSIresearch in a recent edition of its…

Reliable ICs from unreliable devices

In an article published in the most recent issue of imec’s online magazine (http://magazine.imec.be/) titled “Chips must learn how to feel pain and how to cure themselves,” researchers Francky Chatthoor and Guido Groeseneken discuss how to build reliable “5nm-node” ICs…

CSP Market Forecast – Strong

Chip-Scale Packages (CSP) continue to be in strong demand for IC needing the smallest form-factors for applications including automotive, industrial applications to mobile phones and wearable electronics, according to leading market research firm TechSearch International. TechSearch’s latest CSP market forecast…

Dan Rose departs material realm

With sadness I post that Daniel J. Rose, Ph.D.—founder of Rose Associates—passed away on September 20, 2016, due to complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Dan Rose received a Ph.D. in materials engineering from the University of British Columbia, and subsequently spent…

Patterning with Films and Chemicals

Somewhere around 40nm is the limit on the smallest half-pitch feature that can be formed with a single-exposure of 193-nm wavelength laser light using water immersion (193i) lithography. While multiple-patterning (MP) is needed to achieve tighter half-pitches, smaller features at…