Blog Review: Jan. 29


Cadence's Reela Samuel looks beyond silicon to new semiconductor materials under development and the particular applications for gallium nitride, silicon carbide, indium phosphide, glass, and diamond. Siemens' Kyle Fraunfelter and Melville Bryant find that lean approaches alone cannot address the increasingly complex sustainability challenges of semiconductor manufacturing and call for the e... » read more

Advanced Packaging Moving At Breakneck Pace


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advances in packaging with Michael Kelly, vice president of Chiplets and FCBGA Integration at Amkor; William Chen, fellow at ASE; Dick Otte, CEO of Promex Industries; and Sander Roosendaal, R&D director at Synopsys Photonics Solutions. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. [Part 2 of the discussion is here.] ... » read more

The Digital Twin Technology Applied to 6G Communication


This paper provides a comprehensive overview of digital twin technology, starting with its definition as a dynamic virtual representation of physical systems. Furthermore, we distinguish between simulators and digital twins, highlighting their key differences and characteristics particularly related to the interactions with real-time data. The paper also delves into the evolution of digital ... » read more

Improving Uniformity And Linearity For All Masks


When it comes to mask quality, there are two vital measurements: uniformity and linearity. Uniformity measures the consistency of the size of mask features in all occurrences across the entire mask, because different instances of the same target size can vary in size due to manufacturing variation. Linearity measures how well different sizes of shapes on the manufactured mask match their target... » read more

Research Bits: Jan. 28


Optical memory unit Researchers from Nokia Bell Labs developed a new type of optical memory called a programmable photonic latch that enables temporary data storage in optical processing systems. It is modeled after a set-reset latch. The integrated programmable photonic latch is based on optical universal logic gates using silicon photonic micro-ring modulators and can be implemented in co... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: Jan. 28


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=400 /] Find all technical papers here. » read more

DeepSeek: Improving Language Model Reasoning Capabilities Using Pure Reinforcement Learning


A new technical paper titled "DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning" was published by DeepSeek. Abstract: "We introduce our first-generation reasoning models, DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1. DeepSeek-R1-Zero, a model trained via large-scale reinforcement learning (RL) without supervised fine-tuning (SFT) as a preliminary step, demonstrates rema... » read more

The Road To Super Chips


Reticle size limitations are forcing chip design teams to look beyond a single SoC or processor in order to achieve orders of magnitude improvements in processing that are required for AI. But moving data between more processing elements adds a whole new set of challenges that need to be addressed at multiple levels. Steve Woo, distinguished inventor and fellow at Rambus, examines the benefits ... » read more

What IoMT Really Stands For


The basic goals of engineering include the achievement of a product’s purpose, safety, cost, manufacturability, and supportability, among other things. For internet of things (IoT) applications, much of the essential purpose relates to wireless communications that untether communication from wires and cables. This is especially true of the rapidly growing internet of medical things (IoMT), wh... » read more

Assembly Design Rules Slowly Emerge


Process design kits (PDKs) play an essential in ensuring that silicon technology can proceed from one generation to the next in a manner that design tools can keep up with. No such infrastructure has been needed for packaging in the past, but that's beginning to change with advanced packages. Heterogeneous assemblies are still ramping up, but their benefits are attracting new designs. “Chi... » read more

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