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- 2014-11-04 New UltraGig 6400 transmitter wirelessly connects mobile devices to DTVs and large displays, cable-like video quality
Silicon Image, a leading provider of HD connectivity solutions, today announced the UltraGig 6400, a complete WirelessHD transmitter for mobile devices that integrates a 60GHz RF transceiver, baseband processor, and embedded antenna array into a single IC package. Specifically designed for smartphones and tablets, this ultra-low power transmitter enables robust high-definition wireless video connectivity between portable devices and large displays, delivering a cable-quality connection without wires. The UltraGig 6400 mobile 60GHz WirelessHD transmitter is currently sampling to mobile device manufacturers.
"By 2015, smartphones and tablets are estimated to represent a $3 billion+ market forwireless connectivity ICs," said Peter Cooney practice director, semiconductors, at ABI Research. "Driven by the use of mobile products for gaming and other interactive video applications, there is increased consumer demand for connecting these powerful devices to large displays and televisions. Consumers will expect wireless connections to provide the same experience as a wired solution. The UltraGig 6400 is well positioned to meet this emerging market need."
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- 2014-11-04 World-first UHF IGZO Schottky diode presented: Breakthrough achievement towards low-cost passive thin-film RFID tags
At this week's IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2012), imec presented the world-first ultra-high frequency Schottky diode based on amorphous IGZO (Indium-Gallium-Zinc Oxide) as semiconductor. This breakthrough achievement will enable the development of thin-film passive UHF (ultra-high frequency) RFID (radiofrequency ID) tags to replace item-level bar codes.
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- 2014-11-03 Imec and Synopsys expand FinFET collaboration to 10 nanometer geometry
Imec, the Belgian nanoelectronics research center, and Synopsys, Inc., a global leader accelerating innovation in the design, verification and manufacturing of chips and systems, today announced that they have expanded their collaboration in the field of Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) to next-generation FinFET technology at 10-nm. The collaboration builds on extensive work done at 14-nm and several other process geometries, and will calibrate Synopsys' Sentaurus TCAD models to support the next-generation FinFET devices. The collaboration will include 3-D modeling of new device architectures and materials that will enable the semiconductor industry to continue to deliver products with higher performance and lower power consumption.
"Our focus is to address semiconductor deviceand material challenges at 10 nanometers and beyond," said Aaron Thean, director of the logic program at imec, Inc. "Collaborating with Synopsys, the market and technology leader in TCAD, helps us maximize the impact and reach of our advanced research programs."
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- 2014-11-03 Path towards non-Si devices presented at IEDM 2012
At this week's IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2012), imec addressed key challenges of scaling beyond silicon-channel finFETs. Imec showed that channel mobility can be boosted by growing non-Si channels on a strain relaxed buffer (SRB), and demonstrated excellent scalability potential of the technology. Moreover, imec revealed insight on the unique influence oxide trapping has on the gate stack mobility in High-Mobility Ge and III-V channels.
For logic device technology, the industry previously used SiGe source/drain stressors to enhance the Si channel mobility. However, this process is reaching its scalability limits due to lay-out dependent defects. At IEDM 2012,imec demonstrated excellent scalability toward the 1nm/10nm and 7nm nodes with Ge-channel FinFETs through a Si fin replacement process. Imec also delivered significant mobility boosts (of at least 50 percent) when growing a Ge channel on a SiGe 75 percent localized strain relaxed buffer, compared to strained Si channels.
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- 2014-11-03 New STT-MRAM memory element cuts power consumption of mobile processor by two-thirds
Like all digital products, mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet PCs, rely on high-speed memory to supply the main processor with essential instructions and frequently requested data. Until now SRAM has provided the cache-memory solution. However, improving the performance of SRAM to match advances in mobile products results in increasing current leakage, both during operation and in standby mode, degrading power performance.
MRAM, a next-generation memory based on magnetic materials, has emerged as an alternative to SRAM because it is non-volatile, cutting leak current during standby status. However, until now MRAM power consumption has exceeded that of SRAM, throwing up a major barrier to practical application.
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- 2014-11-03 Compact MOS-Varactor simulation model for development of CMOS millimeter wave circuits
Toshiba Corporation today announced the development of a compact MOS-Varactor simulation model that delivers high level accuracy from DC to the millimeter wave (60 GHz) region. The new model was developed in cooperation with Professor Nobuyuki Itoh of Okayama Prefectural University.
The new compact MOS-Varactor model introduces an original algorithm to express scaling effects and can capture the impacts of parasitic effects that dominate in the 60 GHz region. Measurement parameters from 1MHz to 60 GHz for samples with different cell sizes were used for modeling. In general, it is difficult to express MOS-Varactor with a single model, but this newly developed model fully succeeds.
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- 2014-11-03 'Sandwich chips' combining the best of two technologies
Two Leibniz institutes in Germany broke new technological ground and successfully combined their – up to now separate – technology worlds. Due to their high performance the novel chips developed within the HiTeK project shall open up new applications.
Wolfgang Heinrich and Bernd Tillack are convinced of holding the key to faster and more powerful terahertz chips. The two scientists and their teams come from the Berlin-based Ferdinand-Braun-Institut (FBH) and from the IHP–Leibniz-Institut für innovative Mikroelektronik in Frankfurt/Oder – and thus from two different technology worlds. FBH is one of the leading institutes in developing III-V semiconductors, while IHP is specialized in silicon-based systems and circuits. Both Leibniz institutes joined forces within the HiTeK project to combine the advantages of silicon-based CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) circuits from the IHP with those of indium-phosphide circuits from the FBH.- See Details
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- 2014-11-03 Samsung delivers strong 14nm FinFET logic process and design infrastructure for advanced mobile SoC customers
Samsung Electronics today announced that it reached another milestone in the development of 14-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology with the successful tape-out of multiple development vehicles in collaboration with its key design and IP partners. In addition, Samsung has signed an agreement with ARM for 14nm physical IP and libraries. This agreement is the latest in a series from Samsung and ARM that has delivered production proven SoC enablement. Samsung, together with its ecosystem partners, is in a position to offer leading edge customers a robust design infrastructure to drive an ever expanding advanced mobile SoC market.
"As we move closer to true mobile computing, chip designers are eager to take advantage of the gains in performance and significantly lower power of 14nm FinFET to deliver PC like user experience on a mobile device," said Dr. Kyu-Myung Choi, senior vice president ofSystem LSI infrastructure design center, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics. "The design complexities at 14nm require complete harmony between the process technology, design methodology, tools and IPs. We are synchronizing all the key elements so our customers can deliver their newest chips to market quickly and efficiently."
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- 2014-11-03 Record-setting p-type transistor demonstrated: New design boasts the highest 'carry mobility' yet measured
Almost all computer chips use two types of transistors: one called p-type, for positive, and one called n-type, for negative. Improving the performance of the chip as a whole requires parallel improvements in both types.
At the IEEE's International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in December, researchers from MIT's Microsystems TechnologyLaboratories (MTL) presented a p-type transistor with the highest "carrier mobility" yet measured. By that standard, the device is twice as fast as previous experimental p-typetransistors and almost four times as fast as the best commercial p-type transistors.
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- 2014-11-03 High-voltage vacuum power switch for smart power grids: First successful power switch using diamond semiconductor
As part of problem solving-oriented basic research sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), a group consisting of researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) succeeded in fabricating a vacuum-based high withstand-voltage power switch utilizing the features of a diamond semiconductor and demonstrating its operation.
As part of problem solving-oriented basic research, scientists have succeeded for the first time in the world in fabricating a vacuum-based high withstand-voltage power switch and demonstrating its operation. This result was achieved by utilizing the features of a diamond semiconductor.
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- 2014-11-03 Device tosses out unusable PV wafers
Silicon wafers destined to become photovoltaic (PV) cells can take a bruising through assembly lines, as they are oxidized, annealed, purified, diffused, etched, and layered to reach their destinies as efficient converters of the sun's rays into useful electricity.
All those refinements are too much for 5% to 10% of the costly wafers. They have micro-cracks left over from incomplete wafer preparation, which causes them to break on the conveyers or during cell fabrication.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed an instrument that puts pressure on the wafers to find which ones are too fragile to make it through the manufacturing process—and then kicks out those weak wafers before they go through their costly enhancement. NREL's Silicon Photovoltaic Wafer Screening System(SPWSS) is a cube-shaped furnace about 15 inches each side, and can be retrofitted into an assembly line.
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- 2014-11-03 TSMC reports 32 percent profit jump in 4Q of 2012
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract chip manufacturer, reported a 32 percent jump in profits in the final quarter last year, benefiting from increasing global sales of smartphones and tablet computers.
The company said in a statement Thursday that profits amounted to NT$41.6 billion ($1.4 billion) on revenue of NT$131 billion during the October-December period.
It said the company shipped more application processors and other chips for use in mobile devices. This more than made up for stagnant chip sales in computer and consumer electronics goods.
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- 2014-11-01 PVA Tepla, imec demonstrate 3D through-silicon via (TSV) void detection using GHz scanning acoustic microscopy
- Imec and PVA Tepla present breakthrough results in the detection of TSV voids in 3D stacked IC technology. After having applied Scanning Acoustic Microscopy to temporary wafer (de)bonding inspection, they successfully used new advanced GHz SAM technology to detect TSV voids at wafer-level after TSV Copper plating. Together, they will continue to investigate the applicability of high-frequency scanning acoustic microscopy for non-destructive submicron void detection.
The initial focus of the collaboration was on developing metrology aimed at detecting voids after temporary wafer bonding, allowing for proper rework of 3D wafers. Temporary wafer (de)bonding and thin wafer handling remains challenging for 3D stacked IC technology. The development of interface particles and voids during the temporary bonding process has a detrimental impact on the subsequent wafer thinning process steps, affecting the wafer thinning performance as well as long-term tool stability and performance. - See Details
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- 2014-11-01 World class circuits by chip architects
- Thanks to their designs, the battery of a mobile phone stays charged for longer, the signal is better and more data can be transmitted for a lower price. The Integrated Circuit Design group headed by Prof. Bram Nauta at the University of Twente's CTIT Institute devises solutions that have helped set international standards in mobile internet and mobile telephony. In its field, the group is among the top five in the world and it is the only group in the Netherlands to achieve a maximum score in the latest independent research review.
When buying a new mobile device, the consumer has come to expect a new version that can do more, can stay charged for longer and which costs less if at all possible. "All this seems to happen automatically but nothing could be further from the truth," says Professor Bram Nauta. "The current generation of devices contain circuits that we developed between five and ten years ago. It's hard work to stay at the forefront. We are not product developers. We come up with partial solutions that have a significant impact on how new devices work. It's a process that also involves fundamental science. And a lot of calculations."
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- 2014-11-01 Ultra-compact 3-axis accelerometer with embedded microcontroller: Advanced motion-recognition capabilities, sensor hub
- STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications and the world's top manufacturer of MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems), today announced details of a miniature smart sensor that combines a 3-axis accelerometer with an embedded microcontroller together in an ultra-compact 3x3x1mm LGA package for advanced custom motion-recognition capabilities.
ST has combined the microcontroller, operating as a sensor hub that runs sensor-fusion algorithms, and a high-precision 3-axis digital accelerometer into a single package it calls iNEMO-A. The device reduces the demand on the host controller and application processor and decreases power consumption in portable devices. Both benefits deliver greater freedom and flexibility to the design of motion-enabled consumer electronics. The integration of high-resolution linear-motion sensing and the sensor hub in a single package increases system robustness and is ideally suited for board-layout optimization.
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- 2014-11-01 Multilayer ceramic chip capacitors: World's smallest automotive-grade MLCCs in the mega cap class
- TDK Corporation has expanded its CKG series of MEGACAP Type MLCCs to include miniature 1608 to 3216 (EIA 0603 to 1206) packages. Until now these MLCCs were available only in 3225 to 5750 packages (EIA 1210 to 2220). With dimensions of only 1.9 x 1.3 x 1.5 mm³ the new 1608 components are the world's smallest automotive-grade MLCCs in the mega cap class.
The new MLCCs in the smaller case sizes have a capacitance of 10 µF and rated voltages from 16 V to 25 V. The high-reliability, automotive-grade MLCCs with lead frames offer superior thermal shock and mechanical stress resistance. These components are designed for applications in automobiles, base stations and wherever highest reliability is essential. Mass production is scheduled to start in July 2013.
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- 2014-11-01 Researchers find high performance transistors on polymer superior to silicon
- Researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) have developed technologies for transferring compound semiconductors using a polymer as a bonding adhesive and for fabricating high-performance transistors on a polymer.
Based on the respective strengths of AIST's substrate-bonding and device-fabrication technologies and Sumitomo Chemical's compound crystal growth technology, the researchers have developed (1) an adhesive polyimide with excellent heat resistance; (2) a transfer technology for a high-quality indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) layer on a silicon substrate using the adhesive polyimide; and (3) a technology for fabricating transistors at temperatures below 400°C whose performance surpasses that of silicon transistors. These are important technical steps toward integrating post-silicon material devices and silicon large-scale integrated circuits (Si-LSI).
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- 2014-11-01 Researchers building foundation for heat-tolerant electronics
- Case Western Reserve University is leading an international investigation of a finicky alternative to silicon-based electronics and its use in high temperatures or under radiation that would render traditional components useless.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has awarded a $2.9 million grant to the engineers and scientists to systematically analyze what's called a Quasi-2Dimensional-Electron Gas (Q-2D-EG) forming at an oxide-heterointerface. The interface between a metal oxide film and a substrate, can be formed into a transistor.
The goal is to make it in such a way that it will operate at more than 200 degrees Celsius without external cooling.
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- 2014-11-01 Engineer designs self-powered nanoscale devices that never need new batteries
(Phys.org)—It's relatively simple to build a device capable of detecting wireless signals if you don't mind making one that consumes lots of power. It's not so easy to design energy-efficient devices that function as well as the components they replace, or to do it at the nano scale.
That's what Peter Kinget, a professor of electrical engineering, works on. He and his colleagues at the Engineering School are attempting to build self-powered systems using nanoscale devices that can transmit and receive wireless signals using so little power that their batteries never need replacing.
Rather, they rely on tiny bits of ambient solar energy to recharge themselves. Such energy efficiencies could dramatically cut down on the cost to operate a variety of these devices at once, while eliminating the need for maintenance. These sensors would only need to be installed once, and could remain in place functioning autonomously—practically until they wear out or disintegrate on their own.
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- 2014-11-01 Toshiba starts sample shipment of industry's first embedded NAND flash memory modules
- Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has started sample shipments of a 64-gigabyte (GB) embedded NAND flash memory module, the first in the industry equipped with a UFS I/F. The module is fully compliant with the JEDEC UFS Ver.1.1 standard and is designed for application in a wide range of digital consumer products, including smartphones, tablet PCs.
Samples are mainly intended for evaluation of UFS I/F and its protocol in host chipsets and by OS vendors.
Demand continues to grow for large density, high-performance chips that support high resolution video, driven by improved data-processing speeds in host chipsets and wider bandwidths for wireless connectivity.
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- 2014-11-01 Success in operation of transistor with channel length of 3 nm
- AIST researchers have confirmed the operation of an ultra-miniaturized transistor with a channel length of 3 nm. The developed transistor was fabricated employing a V-shaped groove created by anisotropic dissolution of silicon crystal in an alkaline solution. By controlling the conditions of dissolution, a groove with a sharp tip measures 3 nm was prepared and the groove tip was used as the channel. Junctions were formed by a new technique whereby impurities are uniformly distributed on the entire silicon crystal. In terms of electrical characteristics, the current-regulating performance was maximized when the thickness of the channel (whose length is 3 nm) was thinned down to 1 nm.
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- 2014-11-01 Low-power chip for intra-cardiac ventricular fibrillation detection
- Imec demonstrated a low-power (20µW), intra-cardiac signal processing chip for the detection of ventricular fibrillation at this week's International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2013) in San Francisco with Olympus. An important step toward next-generation Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy solutions, the new chip delivers innovative signal processing functionalities and consumes only 20µW when all channels are active, enabling the miniaturization of implantable devices.
Robust and accurate Heart Rate (HR) monitoring of the right and left ventricles and right atrium is essential for implantable devices for Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy. And accurate motion sensor and thoracic impedance measurements to analyze intra-thoracic fluid are critical for improving clinical research and analysis of the intra-cardiac rhythm. Moreover, extreme low-power consumption is required to further reduce the size of cardiac implants and improve the patient's quality of life.
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- 2014-10-31 Imec demonstrates low power beamforming transceiver chipset for 60GHz multi-Gbit wireless communication
- Imec, in collaboration with Panasonic Corporation, has presented at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC2013) a 60GHz radio transceiver chipset with low power consumption, that delivers high data rates over short distances. Imec drastically boosted the link budget of the system by introducing beamforming into the radio architecture. This multi-Gbit 60GHz chipset paves the way toward small size, low-power, low-cost, high-data rate solutions for battery-operated consumer devices, such as smart phones and tablets.
"Exchange of gigabytes of data between mobile devices requires a viable 60GHz technology that balances cost, size and power consumption," said Liesbet Van der Perre, program director of green radios at imec, "Imec's prototype transceiver chipset enables multi-gigabit wireless connectivity for 'true mobile' devices thanks to its very low power consumption. - See Details
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- 2014-10-31 Small but mighty Xenon flash for mobile phones: Great shots in the dark soon to be a reality
- A Singapore invention looks set to equip mobile phones with a built-in, small yet powerful Xenon flash, allowing consumers to take great photos even in low-light conditions.
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have made a revolutionary capacitor that overcomes the limitations of current capacitors, which are needed to store enough energy to fire a powerful flash like those found on digital cameras but are too big to fit in slim mobile devices.
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- 2014-10-31 Ultra-low power processor operates at near-threshold voltage
- At this week's International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2013), imec and Holst Centre presented an ultra-low power processor that operates reliably at near-threshold voltages. The processor delivers clock speeds up to 1MHz at voltages down to 0.4 V. In tests based on a Fast Fourier Transform use case, it consumed only 79 µW – a fraction of the power consumption at standard voltages.
"Energy-efficient data processing will be vital for a wide range of emerging applications from Body Area Networks to building automation and equipment monitoring. Reducing active power consumption and standby leakage are thus increasingly important considerations for digital design," said Harmke de Groot, Program Director at Holst Centre/imec. "Yet much of the industry's research is still aimed at improving performance rather than increasing battery lifetime by higher energy efficiency. At Holst Centre, we focus on low power and low voltage to enable battery-powered and energy scavenging smart devices."
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- 2014-10-31 Toshiba's low-power SRAM chip aims to cut device drain
- (Phys.org)—Toshiba has announced a low-power embedded SRAM memory chip which may make future mobile devices last longer. Presenting its SRAM developments at the International Solid-State Circuit Conference in San Francisco in February, Toshiba said that its low-power design technique could help cut active and standby power consumption by 27 percent and 85 percent, respectively. Toshiba accomplished this by using a bit-line power calculator, or BLPC, to predict the power consumption of the bit lines and to monitor consumption of SRAM rest circuits, and a digitally-controllable retention circuit, or DCRC.
The DCRC is used to decrease standby power by updating the size of the buffer in the retention driver.
Toshiba noted its technology advancement is suited for smartphones and other mobile products. The technology reduces active and standby power in temperatures ranging from room temperature to high temperature through use of this BLPC and DCRC.
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- 2014-10-31 Highly energy-efficient CMOS logic systems
- Non-volatile bistable memory circuits being developed by Satoshi Sugahara and his team at Tokyo Tech pave the way for highly energy-efficient CMOS logic systems. The details are described in the February 2013 issue of Tokyo Institute of Technology Bulletin.
Developments in low power, high performance CMOS logic technology are vital to the future of microprocessors and system-on-chip (SoC) devices for personal computers, servers, and mobile/smart phones. Much of the processing in these computing systems is carried out using a volatile hierarchical memory system in which bistable circuits such as static random access memory (SRAM) and flip-flop (FF) play an essential role for fast data-access. However, the power to these bistable circuits cannot be switched off without losing their data. This inability to turn off power is a fundamental problem for energy consumption in CMOS logic systems.
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- 2014-10-31 Analog to digital converter research improves Internet speeds to 100 Gb/second
(Phys.org)—Scientists from IBM Research and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland unveiled a technological achievement in signal conversion technology that can improve Internet speeds to 100 Gigabits per second (Gb/s), doubling current technology on the market today. The research was presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) on February 20.
The annual growth rate of structured and unstructured Big Data is 60 percent. A large portion of this is real world data from the environment, including images, light, sound and even the radio signals from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago—and it's all analog.
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- 2014-10-31 Innovative amplifiers for biomedical and environment monitoring systemsInnovative amplifiers for biomedical and environment monitoring systems
However, in order to realize small offset voltages of IA, conventional IAs utilize analog filters—composed of large passive components, resistors and capacitors— resulting in excessively large silicon chips.
Now, Ippei Akita and colleague at Toyohashi University of Technology have developed a novel architecture for fabricating smaller sized integrated circuit chips. The technique is based on a digital calibration scheme for minimizing the offset voltage of the IA circuit, instead of an analog scheme used in conventional circuits.
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- 2014-10-31 Researcher finds Moore's Law and Wright's Law best predict how tech improves
Researchers at MIT and the Santa Fe Institute have found that some widely used formulas for predicting how rapidly technology will advance—notably, Moore's Law and Wright's Law—offer superior approximations of the pace of technological progress. The new research is the first to directly compare the different approaches in a quantitative way, using an extensive database of past performance from many different industries.
Some of the results were surprising, says Jessika Trancik, an assistant professor ofengineering systems at MIT. The findings could help industries to assess where to focus their research efforts, investors to pick high-growth sectors, and regulators to more accurately predict the economic impacts of policy changes.
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