As I’ve mentioned before, when I designed my first ASIC back in the mists of time we used to know as 1980, we were at the 5-micron technology node and our state-of-the-art devices each contained only a couple of thousand transistors. This may not seem like a lot of transistors, but we made each of them count (no pun intended). Using this technology, the team of which I was a member created the central processing unit (CPU) for a mainframe computer the sight of which would make you squeal with joy (or maybe that was just me).
Today, people are creating monolithic silicon chips containing billions of transistors. Also, we appear to be poised to enter a new era of chiplet-based designs.
Complementing the advances in process and manufacturing technologies are incredible innovations in semiconductor design, verification, and test tools and technologies. Today’s software simulators and hardware emulators take my breath away with respect to their capacities and capabilities.
All of this is supported by advances in processor architectures and the availability of humongous amounts of high-speed, high- capacity semiconductor memory devices. In turn, these next- generation processors and memory devices are made possible by the aforementioned process technologies and design, verification, and test tools. It’s like the circle of life (but even more exciting)!
What prompted my current cogitations and ruminations? Well, it may be this month’s feature on semiconductors, which starts on Page 12. I can only imagine what we will see in the years to come. Whatever it is, as always, the team at DENA will have you covered!