D&R Industry Articles (July 2012)

Featured Article

Modern Techniques to Prevent Hacking in Medical Systems

The advent of electronics has transformed medical devices to become smarter and more convenient to our daily lives. But recent headlines of hacking point out a consternation of electronics. Medical device designers need to understand new tools and design techniques that can prevent hacking and illicit modification. The issue of hacking and illicit modification is multi-faceted. Is the software protected inside a microcontroller? How can access to a chip be eliminated to prevent hacking? Is there a way to detect code modification? These are chip-level concerns.

Featured Article

ASIC Implementation of a Speech Detector IP-Core for Real-Time Speaker Verification

For voice processing it is important to ensure that the signal to be analyzed actually contains relevant information, especially if the system is operating in a real-time. This paper presents an IPcore speech detector for real-time systems, focusing on identification of segments of silence or voice, used in pre-processing of input signals to Speaker Recognition and Verification Systems. The IP-core was designed to be able to be adapted to different environments of use and based on energy of samples to classify them as voice or silence.

Featured Article

Dose Mapper - Advanced System for Correction of Critical Dimension (CD) Variations in Deep Sub Micron Technologies

Semiconductor industry is moving towards the deep sub micron technology where the channel length of the device becomes as small as 65/40/32/28 nm and beyond. Fabrication of these smaller devices is a big challenge due to critical dimension uniformity (CDU) which impacts the device performance and its characteristics. CDU is a major contributor to yield drop out in deep sub micron technologies and a big concern to the lithography process. Both the Intra field and the inter field type of CD variations can be controlled by an advanced system named as Dose Mapper which provides wafer CD feedbacks to the scanner. This paper provides an update on Critical Dimension (CD) Variations, Dose Mapper System to maintain critical dimension uniformity (CDU) and Standard Cell Architecture of Dose Map Key.

Featured Article

Rethinking The Pursuit of Moore's Law

There is much excitement about the semiconductor industry moving to 28nm and 20nm process technology. For a majority of products, however, it will be several years before these leading-edge process technologies make economic sense. These products will remain on mature process technologies, getting none of the benefits that Moore’s Law1 brings. What if there was another way? What if you could extend the capabilities of mature technologies without having to overcome the cost wall of a shrink to the leading edge?