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“World’s First” Organic BJT—Could Organic Transistors Take Off?

“World’s First” Organic BJT—Could Organic Transistors Take Off?

Researchers at TU Dresden have created the "world's first" efficient organic bipolar junction transistor (OBJT).


News Jun 27, 2022 by Jake Hertz
The Basics of Electrical Engineering Standards

The Basics of Electrical Engineering Standards

Get a high-level introduction to how standards play into the EE world.


TSMC Scales Down to 2nm Node, Announces New “FINFLEX” Architecture

TSMC Scales Down to 2nm Node, Announces New “FINFLEX” Architecture

At this year's North American Technology Symposium, TSMC announced new process nodes that may innovate chip design at an architectural level.


News Jun 23, 2022 by Jake Hertz
Purdue University Kicks Off First Semiconductor Degrees Program

Purdue University Kicks Off First Semiconductor Degrees Program

With an eye on the semiconductor engineering shortage, Purdue University has launched a six-component flexible study program.


News Jun 15, 2022 by Biljana Ognenova
Intel Rethinks a Common Substrate to Combat Chip Shortage

Intel Rethinks a Common Substrate to Combat Chip Shortage

Intel is getting creative in how it addresses manufacturing slowdowns—this time, by doubling up on capacitors for both sides of the ABF substrate.


News Jun 13, 2022 by Jake Hertz
An Introduction to RISC-V—Understanding RISC’s Open ISA

An Introduction to RISC-V—Understanding RISC’s Open ISA

This article is a primer into the basics of RISC-V. The open architecture philosophy is exposed, along with a technical description of the modular ISA, and some commercial RISC-V microprocessor implementations.


Microchip Pushes First RISC-V-based SoC FPGA to Mass Production

Microchip Pushes First RISC-V-based SoC FPGA to Mass Production

Microchip continues the push for RISC-V hardware by reaching milestones with its PolarFire system-on-a-chip (SoC) field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and Mi-V ecosystem.


News Jun 10, 2022 by Jake Hertz
Silicon Lifecycle Management: Enabling Silicon Visibility Through Intelligent Analysis

Silicon Lifecycle Management: Enabling Silicon Visibility Through Intelligent Analysis

Learn about silicon lifecycle management (SLM), what it is, the EDA challenges involved, how it relates to SoC systems, and its overall benefits.


PCB Layout Challenges—Improve Your Switched-mode Power Supply Designs

PCB Layout Challenges—Improve Your Switched-mode Power Supply Designs

Switched-mode power supplies (SMPS) appear simple to route on your PCB, but are they? This article identifies two noise sources and simple fixes to improve your EMC performance.


Ep. 46 | Microsoft VP Marcus Fontoura on Architecting Azure, the “World’s Computer”

Ep. 46 | Microsoft VP Marcus Fontoura on Architecting Azure, the “World’s Computer”

Behind the scenes with a Microsoft Technical Fellow and Corporate VP who discusses the software, hardware, and infrastructure behind Azure cloud computing, the software-defined data center, and what makes the most efficient, sustainable data centers in the world.


AMD SOM Kit Propels Robotics Beyond Custom Designs

AMD SOM Kit Propels Robotics Beyond Custom Designs

Keen to free industrial robotics from the burdens of custom design, AMD has launched a SOM-based starter kit that puts ROS 2 and predefined interface apps into play.


News May 17, 2022 by Jeff Child
GaN-on-Silicon for RF Applications? ST and MACOM Claim Success

GaN-on-Silicon for RF Applications? ST and MACOM Claim Success

STMicroelectronics and MACOM announced the successful production of RF GaN-on-Silicon technology, hoping to solve GaN production challenges for RF components.


News May 16, 2022 by Jake Hertz
Innovative Interconnects: The Future of Chiplet-based Processors?

Innovative Interconnects: The Future of Chiplet-based Processors?

Many of the world's largest chipmakers like AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA are investing in chiplets. But heterogeneous processors are not without their flaws.


News Apr 18, 2022 by Arjun Nijhawan
“First” Silicon-based Qubits at Scale Narrows Gap for Quantum Computing

“First” Silicon-based Qubits at Scale Narrows Gap for Quantum Computing

Intel and QuTech have teamed up for scaling and solving quantum technology challenges with the success of the first fabrication of silicon-based qubits.


News Apr 18, 2022 by Jake Hertz
Ep. 43 | Mark Papermaster: The EE and Exec Behind Apple, IBM, Cisco, and AMD’s Success

Ep. 43 | Mark Papermaster: The EE and Exec Behind Apple, IBM, Cisco, and AMD’s Success

What hasn’t Mark Papermaster accomplished? He’s the engineer and exec who impacted Apple’s iPhones and iPods, the IBM Power PC, and has led AMD's remarkable rejuvenation from a company that “may have lost their way” to surpassing Intel’s market cap.


The Pros and Cons of Moving EDA to the Cloud

The Pros and Cons of Moving EDA to the Cloud

Taking EDA to the cloud, Synopsys’ new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings for EDA and IC design raise the question: is cloud computing a good choice for chip design?


News Apr 11, 2022 by Jake Hertz
2D Semiconductors May Be Key to 3D Integration, Say Stanford Researchers

2D Semiconductors May Be Key to 3D Integration, Say Stanford Researchers

New research indicates how 2D semiconductors could advance monolithic 3D integration in a scalable way—prolonging Moore's law in the process.


News Apr 02, 2022 by vishvachi
Finding Your EE “Why” With Thy Tran: The “Semiconductor Gypsy”

Finding Your EE “Why” With Thy Tran: The “Semiconductor Gypsy”

In honor of Woman’s History Month, AAC talked with Micron’s Thy Tran who has made waves in the industry, inspiring new engineers and helping to bring groundbreaking DRAM technology to life.


News Mar 31, 2022 by Kimber Wymore
Ep. 42 | Groq CEO and Ex-Googler Jonathan Ross on the Petaflop AI Chip and First Ever TPU

Ep. 42 | Groq CEO and Ex-Googler Jonathan Ross on the Petaflop AI Chip and First Ever TPU

Groq’s chip architecture is something all electrical engineers will drool over. It not only focuses on high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), but it can do 1 PetaOp—1 quadrillion operations per second. “Which is four commas, not three... yeah,” Groq’s CEO Jonathan Ross emphasizes while confirming it is indeed 300X faster than NVIDIA’s chip. This “successful college dropout” designed Google’s TPU (tensor processing unit) and came up with $10B ideas at X - the moonshot factory, but “never in a million years” thought he’d be Groq’s CEO.


Chiplet Design Hopes to Rise Up as a Contender for Sidestepping Moore’s Law

Chiplet Design Hopes to Rise Up as a Contender for Sidestepping Moore’s Law

To overcome Moore's Law and die-to-die interconnection issues, the world’s top companies are turning to chiplet design for their next-generation computing hardware.


News Mar 28, 2022 by Jake Hertz