Siliconica – Observations and musings on the silicon chip industry

FCMN Coming up Next Month

Posted on March 11, 2019March 11, 2019 by Dick James

On April 2 – 4, the 2019 International Conference on Frontiers of Characterization and Metrology for Nanoelectronics (FCMN) will be held at the Monterey Marriott in Monterey, CA. The 2019 FCMN is the 12th in the series that began in 1995 with a keynote talk by Craig Barrett, ex-CEO of Intel. As its title says, […]

Intel announces tweaks to 22FFL process for RF, MRAM at IEDM18 – Part 2

Posted on March 11, 2019March 11, 2019 by Dick James

Part 2 – MRAM in 22FFL The second 22FFL paper at IEDM18 [1] describes the integration of Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ)-based MRAM (magnetic random-access memory) into the back-end of the process. MTJ technology is attractive for embedded non-volatile memory because of relatively low cost compared with e-flash, with comparable endurance and data retention properties. Intel’s […]

Intel announces tweaks to 22FFL process for RF, MRAM at IEDM18 – Part 1

Posted on March 11, 2019March 11, 2019 by Dick James

At IEDM last year, Intel gave a half-dozen papers on various topics, including two on their 22FFL SoC process aimed at low power IoT and mobile products. The first (14.1) was an invited presentation on “Intel 22nm FinFET (22FFL) Process Technology for RF and mmWave Applications and Circuit Design Optimization for FinFET Technology”, and the […]

The Packaging of Apple’s A12X is… Strange

Posted on March 3, 2019March 11, 2019 by Dick James

Watching the video from the new iPad Pro launch back on October 30, there was a pseudo assembly sequence within it. Being the teardown nerd that I am, I kept running through it until I got a set of screen shots that showed the motherboard being populated, one of which was: In the centre is […]