Author Archives: Chris Edwards

About Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards has spent a long time covering electronics and EDA. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Engineering Times UK and electronics editor of the IET's Engineering & Technology. His work has appeared in a variety of international newspapers including The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Age and the South China Morning Post.
March 7, 2012

Highlights of DATE 2012

The Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) is approaching fast. This year the conference has two special days: one focuses on more than Moore technologies; the other on e-mobility and electric transport.
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March 6, 2012

IMEC readies finFETs for 14nm PDK

FinFETs are among the options in a 14nm process design kit developed by IMEC: a kit that attempts to cater for the effects of immersion and EUV lithography.
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March 6, 2012

ASSP shift continues as design starts fall

Gartner has released its estimates for chip design starts out to the middle of the decade. Both are falling but the emphasis is shifting to ASSPs and mainstream processes.
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February 29, 2012

Full-flow 450mm line in 2015 says IMEC

Belgian research institute IMEC has stepped up its plans for 450mm development and now aims to have an operational full-flow pilot line by the end of 2015, according to president Luc Van den hove speaking at ISS Europe this week.
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February 28, 2012

‘Virtual foundry’ plan for plastic chips

The COLAE project will use the production facilities at European research centres to provide printed-electronics production services to startups. But it will probably involve more joint process work than the conventional foundry model.
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February 27, 2012

System-level design meets power

In the world of power semiconductors, not many companies try to go fabless. The tradeoffs between design and process offer many more options for system-level design, argued Infineon's Reinhard Ploss at the ISS Europe conference.
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February 20, 2012

Intel takes considered route to FinFET

The International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) this year provided an opportunity to see how the team that was first to put a finFET or trigate-based process into action on a multi-million transistor design did it.
February 8, 2012

ITRS update goes online

The wait is over for the latest edition of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS).
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February 7, 2012

Near misses don’t teach the right lessons

Y2K taught the world some lessons: but mostly the wrong ones, according to Martyn Thomas in his keynote at the Safety-Critical Systems Symposium 2012.
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February 6, 2012

Tech Design Forum is changing

The Tech Design Forum is going through some more changes as we add features and resources.
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