Guides - Technologies

NAND flash is a key technology for all systems. 3D techniques now control its cost and potential for future capacity increases.

Accellera's Portable Stimulus standard aims to improve verification efficiency and the reuse of test IP across the entire design life cycle.

The 20nm node can offer power, performance and area advantages, but making these gains takes a deep understanding of the interactions between process and design.

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling is effective for low-power VLSI design. Body or back bias can provide additional control over leakage and performance.

Monolithic 3DIC integration may provide a viable alternative to conventional 2D scaling for SoCs if manufacturing problems can be overcome.

A static-analysis tool that checks for errors in HDL code, lint is becoming an increasingly important addition to simulation for RTL and SoC signoff.

As designs get larger and stress the ability of simulation to exercise an SoC, formal techniques have become essential parts of design and verification.

In the absence of EUV lithography, the primary option for manufacturing on a 10nm process is to extend double patterning. But the options each have issues.

The 10nm generation is the follow-on process to the 14nm/16nm node and will provide a choice of either finFET or planar FD-SOI architectures. But the likely absence of EUV will increase costs.

The 14nm and 16nm processes cover a range of technologies and are designed to succeed the 20nm generation. They bring with them a number of design challenges.