Electronics Weekly

Essentials of leakage power management

Since the shift to CMOS in the 1980s, designers have enjoyed the benefits of a technology whose power consumption was largely defined by the level of switching activity in the circuit. In many cases, ...
Ars Technica

Transistors go 3D as Intel re-invents the microchip

At an event today in San Francisco, Intel announced one of the most important pieces of semiconductor news in many years: the company's upcoming 22nm processors will feature a fundamental change to ...
Semiconductor Engineering

Identifying DRAM Failures Caused By Leakage Current And Parasitic Capacitance

Leakage current has been a leading cause of device failure in DRAM design, starting with the 20nm technology node. Problems with leakage current in DRAM design can lead to reliability issues, even ...
Electronic Design

Ultra-Low Power Timers Cut Effects of Leakage Currents

Semiconductor leakage paths can cause excessive quiescent current (also called ground current) in remote sensing applications. These leakage paths shorten battery life and become more critical because ...
Semiconductor Engineering

Reducing Post-Placement Leakage With Stress-Enhanced Fill Cells

As downward scaling of transistors continues, optimizing power consumption for mobile devices is a major concern. Power consumption consists of two components: dynamic and static. Dynamic (active) ...
Physics World

Vertical graphene transistor avoids leakage

Physicists in the UK have found a way to overcome a major barrier blocking the use of graphene in electronic devices – how to prevent current leaking through a device when it is switched off. Graphene ...
Nanowerk

2D metal contacts stop transistor leakage currents in their tracks

Computers, despite all their apparent complexity, are basically just a large number of electronic switches, flicking on and off in the right order to process digital information. Semiconductor ...
MIT Technology Review

3-D Transistors

The new transistors (above) have vertical current-carrying channels. In older designs (inset), the channels lie flat under the gates. In an effort to keep squeezing more components onto silicon chips, ...
Nanowerk

MOSHEMT - innovative transistor technology reaches record frequencies

(Nanowerk News) Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF have succeeded in developing a novel type of transistor with extremely high cut-off frequencies: metal oxide ...
Wired

Intel Debuts First 3-D Transistor for New 'Ivy Bridge' Chip

Intel has announced the world's first 3-D microprocessor transistor for mass production. It's a major breakthrough for the semiconductor industry, which has been trying for years to get the ...
Electronic Design

Surrounding Gate Transistors May Improve DRAM

DRAM makes up the bulk of non-volatile memory in computer systems. Much has been done lately to mix non-volatile storage with DRAM. However, DRAM’s performance and capacity still win out when it comes ...