There was a time, decades really, when all it took to make a better computer chip were smaller transistors and narrower interconnects. That time’s long gone now, and although transistors will continue to get a bit smaller, simply making them ...

Stephen Cass: Hi, I’m Stephen Cass, for IEEE Spectrum’s Fixing the Future. This episode is brought to you by IEEE Xplore, the digital library with over 6 million pieces of the world’s best technical content. Today I have with me ...

Discussions at chip design conferences rarely get heated. But a year ago at the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD), things got out of hand. It was described by observers as a “trainwreck” and an “ambush.” The crux of the ...

One looming artifact of the pandemic that remains in 2023—the global chip shortage—has gratefully begun to recede. Unlike the state of things in mid 2021—when crimps in the semiconductor supply chain cropped up in big ways—supply and demand have become ...

Nvidia says it has found a way to speed up a computation-limited step in the chipmaking process so that it happens 40 times as fast as today’s standard. Called inverse lithography, it’s a key tool that allows chipmakers to print ...