What Exactly Are Chiplets And Heterogeneous Integration?

By Bryon Moyer - 20 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 1

The terms “chiplet” and “heterogeneous integration” fill news pages, conference papers, and marketing presentations, and for the most part engineers understand what they're reading. But speakers sometimes stumble during a presentation trying to figure out whether a particular die qualifies as a chiplet, and heterogeneous integration comes in different guises for different people. Both t... » read more

The Rise Of Thin Wafer Processing

By Laura Peters - 20 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

The shift from planar SoCs to 3D-ICs and advanced packages requires much thinner wafers in order to improve performance and reduce power, reducing the distance that signals need to travel and the amount of energy needed to drive them. Markets calling for ultrathin wafers are growing. The combined thickness of an HBM module with 12 DRAM dies and a base logic chip is still less than that of a ... » read more

Sustainable AI Systems For Energy-Efficient Computing

By Pushkar Apte - 20 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

By Pushkar Apte, Jim Sexton, and Melissa Grupen-Shemansky The world is abuzz with the new opportunities being created by artificial intelligence (AI), enabled by the availability of unprecedented amounts of data. AI runs on the semiconductor engine, and in turn, creates a rising demand for semiconductor chips. The semiconductor industry is predicted to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030 ... » read more

Many Options For EUV Photoresists, No Clear Winner

By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 4

In EUV lithography, and especially high-numerical-aperture EUV, balancing tradeoffs between resolution, sensitivity and line-width roughness is becoming increasingly difficult. Lithography patterning using extreme UV exposure depends on a resist mask that can simultaneously meet targets of small feature resolution, high sensitivity to EUV wavelength, and acceptable linewidth roughness. Unfor... » read more

EFO Errors In The Wire-Bonding Semiconductor Packaging Process

By Technical Paper Link - 19 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

A new technical paper titled "A Comparative Study on Various Au Wire Rinse Compositions and Their Effects on the Electronic Flame-Off Errors of Wire-Bonding Semiconductor Package" was published by researchers at Hanbat National University, Seoul National University and Chungnam National University. The paper states: "In this study, we identify the origin of electronic flame-off (EFO) erro... » read more

Chip Failures: Prevention And Responses Over Time

By Ed Sperling - 19 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the causes of chip failures, how to respond to them, and how that can change over time, with Steve Pateras, vice president of marketing and business development at Synopsys; Noam Brousard, vice president of solutions engineering at proteanTecs; Harry Foster, chief verification scientist at Siemens EDA; and Jerome Toublanc, hi... » read more

Blog Review: Mar. 19

By Jesse Allen - 19 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

Cadence's Neelabh Singh explains the defined port operations of USB4 that are used to bring transmitters burst and receivers of a design under test into compliance mode and to execute tests like bit error tests, error rate tests, clock switch tests, TxFFE equalization tests, and electrical idle tests. Siemens EDA's Stephen V. Chavez examines the use of blind and buried vias in high-density i... » read more

Optimizing Data Movement In SoCs And Advanced Packages

By Ed Sperling - 18 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

The amount of data that needs to move around a chip is growing exponentially, driven by the rollout of AI and more sensors everywhere. There may be hundreds of IP blocks, more compute elements, and many more wires to contend with. Andy Nightingale, vice president of product management and marketing at Arteris, talks about the demand for low-latency on-chip communication in increasingly complex ... » read more

Research Bits: Mar. 18

By Jesse Allen - 18 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

High-frequency signal conversion Researchers from ETH Zurich developed a plasmonic modulator capable of converting electrical signals into optical signals with a frequency of over a terahertz. The modulator is a tiny nanostructure made up of various materials, including gold, and makes use of the interaction between light and free electrons within the gold. It converts signals directly, red... » read more

Changes In Motor Control

By Ed Sperling - 17 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

Motors are changing in fundamental ways, and you can actually hear the difference. Vacuums, air conditioners, and home appliances are getting quieter. They're also becoming more efficient, able to last longer on a single battery charge or drawing less energy from the grid, and they're becoming more secure. Steve Tateosian, senior vice president for Infineon's IoT, Compute & Wireless Busines... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →