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The ESD Association's annual "2007 EOS/ESD Symposium," a premier international event focused on electrical overstress and electrostatic discharge failures and solutions in electronic devices and parts, was held in Anaheim, California, USA, from September 16—21. Here we will briefly introduce the research findings presented by NEC Electronics engineers at this year's EOS/ESD Symposium.

NEC Electronics has developed a 55-nanometer (nm) cell-based integrated circuit (IC) capable of dramatically reducing power consumption. Utilized in this IC is a low standby power CMOS technology that supports extended battery usage in mobile phones and other portable devices. We asked the developers of the first practical application of high-k gate insulation film to discuss their journey to make ultra-thin high-k a reality.

The "2007 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits"—widely recognized as premiere conferences for presenting research results on the latest device, process, and circuit-related developments—were held this year at the Rihga Royal Hotel in Kyoto, Japan, from June 11 to 16, 2007. Here we will introduce the papers presented by NEC Electronics in collaboration with NEC Corporation.

2007/09/25 "Development of Fundamental New Technologies Enabling Further Digitization of Wireless IP Cores" has been added.

The world's most advanced wiring technology was announced at the IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC) 2007, which was held from June 4 to June 6, 2007 in San Francisco, California. Engineers from NEC Electronics and NEC Corporation introduced their joint research results at this year's conference.

To achieve high-resolution display of graphics in cellular phones and other high-end consumer devices, high-speed data processing is certainly required, but larger memory capacity and high-speed data transfers between the processor and memory are also indispensable. In this article, we will introduce SMAFTI, a promising new system-in-package (SiP) architecture that was specifically developed to meet these high-speed data transfer and large memory capacity requirements at low cost.

A powerful statistical modeling-based algorithm has been developed for determining optimal timing design margins to address the challenge of increasing interconnect parameter variations in the development of system LSI chips for the 65-nanometer (nm) node and beyond. The algorithm has now been incorporated in an RC extraction tool and been proven to result in enhanced design capabilities.

The robustness of transistors to electrostatic discharge (ESD) drops remarkably with the scaling down of feature dimensions in semiconductor devices. We have developed a new type of ESD-protection device for power supply systems and a protection circuit to improve ESD robustness. These new techniques target system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices with multiple power domains that separate power supplies to improve noise characteristics and decrease power consumption.

The "2006 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits"—recognized as the premiere conference for presenting research results on the latest device, process, and circuit-related developments—were held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel in Honolulu June 13 to 17 and featured a number of papers presented by NEC Electronics in collaboration with NEC.

The ninth annual IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC), a premier conference for presenting and discussing the latest interconnect and packaging technologies, was held in San Francisco June 5 to 7, 2006. A number of collaborative NEC Electronics/NEC papers were selected for inclusion at this year's conference.

As digital broadcasting becomes more widespread, the EMMA Series of system LSI chips are contributing to the compatibility of HDTV broadcasting with key digital AV appliances, namely the set-top box (STB), the digital TV and the DVD recorder.

ISSCC 2006 (IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference)—featuring papers on cutting-edge integrated-circuit technologies—was held February 5-9 in San Francisco, California, and featured several papers introducing the findings of collaborative research conducted recently by NEC Corporation and NEC Electronics.

NEC Electronics has published its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report outlining CSR activities carried out during fiscal year 2004. Through customer satisfaction (CS) promotion, compliance, global environment conservation and other activities, our company is working to fulfill its social responsibilities. This article introduces some of the activities being undertaken.

A seminar aimed at providing information on 8-bit "all flash" microcontroller solutions and answering questions about these devices was held in Tokyo on July 15, and in Osaka on July 22, 2005.

On June 29, 2005, NEC Electronics' mobile phone application processor (MP211) won the 12th Annual LSI of the Year Excellence Award in the Device Category.

From June 14 to 18, the 2005 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits was held at the Rihga Royal Hotel in Kyoto, where a number of scientists made presentations about the state -of -the art in device, process and circuit technology. This article summarizes the research results presented by NEC Electronics in collaboration with NEC at the symposia this year.

NEC Electronics' concurrent design flow makes it possible for engineers to verify chip and package designs very precisely in the early stages of the design process. This article explains how the revolutionary flow helps shorten development periods and accelerate time to market.

NEC Electronics beat its competitors to market with the industry's first EMI measurement method for semiconductors, a technology that can enable customers to reduce the EMI noise generated by electronic devices. The path to delivering this technology, however, was by no means a smooth one.

What to do with the many millions of transistors that fit into today's chips? If you design those chips, you probably want to use huge numbers of transistors to make memory, because every system-on-a-chip (SoC) needs lots of it. Using external DRAM-like the memory chips in PCs-slows an SoC down and uses more power. Putting the memory inside the SoC also shrinks everything by reducing the overall number of components and the number of pins on the SoC.

The IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) each year presents the latest advances in integrated circuit technology. This year's ISSCC was held in San Francisco February 6 through 10 and featured some results from the research conducted jointly by NEC Electronics and NEC Corporation.

NEC Electronics received the ET Excellence Award at Embedded Technology 2004, an exhibition held at Pacifico Yokohama in Japan from November 17-19, 2004.

NEC Electronics is actively transmitting information about its involvement in environmental activities. Here, we will introduce our most recent information disclosure activities.

At the 11th annual "LSI of the Year" awards ceremony on July 7, 2004, NEC Electronics was awarded the Excellence Award in the Device Category for its audio-video processing LSI (µPD61181) for DVD recorder applications.

For five days from October 7-11, 2003, NEC Electronics participated in CEATEC JAPAN held at Tokyo's Makuhari Messe.

On June 23, 2003, the opening ceremony of the Advanced System-on-Chip (SoC) Joint Research Center at NEC Sagamihara plant was held by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), an incorporated administrative agency.

NEC Electronics has published an environmental report for the first time since its launch from NEC.

On July 24, 2003, nine months after our company's establishment, we were pleased to have NEC Electronics stocks listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE).

On July 9, 2003, NEC Electronics received two "LSI of the Year 2003" awards, sponsored by Semiconductor Industry News and Reed Exhibitions Japan, Ltd.

The 2003 VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration) Symposia, an influential international semiconductor conference, was held on June 10-14, 2003, in Kyoto, Japan. Here we will introduce the research results presented by NEC Electronics at the VLSI Symposia.

On July 2, 2003, NEC Electronics' 192-output µPD16347 plasma display panel (PDP) data driver IC received the Advanced Display of the Year (ADY) 2003 Grand Prize in the Display Materials and Components Category.

At the 6th Embedded Systems Expo & Conference (ESEC) held July 9-11 in Tokyo, NEC Electronics' booth staffers exhibited a variety of embedded solutions, including the Instant Silicon Solution Platform™ (ISSP™) that enables high-performance ASIC design in a short period of time and the company's 64-bit V_R Series™ RISC microprocessor line-up, among others.

On May 5 (U.S. time), NEC Electronics America successfully demonstrated the PCI Express™ system, the next-generation bus standard advocated by Intel Corporation, at the Windows® Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in New Orleans.

NEC Electronics received the 2002 Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) award from Intel Corporation on March 26 (U.S. time). The SCQI award recognizes a select group of suppliers who have been highly evaluated for the quality and performance of the products and services they provide to Intel.