Ramping Up IC Predictive Maintenance
By Anne Meixner - 07 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

The chip industry is starting to add technology that can predict impending failures early enough to stave off serious problems, both in manufacturing and in the field. Engineers increasingly are employing in-circuit monitors embedded in SoC designs to catch device failures earlier in the production flow. But for ICs in the field, data tracing from design to application use only recently has ... » read more

Effect Of RF Plasma Process Gas Chemistry And Electrode Configuration On The Removal Of Copper Lead Frame Oxidation
By Daniel Chir - 07 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

By Daniel Chir and Johnson Toh Lead frame surface oxidation can lead to surface delamination after molding or wire bonding issues. The application of plasma treatment has been proven to be safe and effective solution to address these issues. However, the effectiveness of plasma treatment for removing oxide is dependent on the correct use of recipe parameters, gas chemistry and electrode conf... » read more

The 5G mmWave Commercialization Effort Is Underway
By David Vondran - 07 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

By David Vondran and Rodrigo Carrillo-Ramirez 5G broadband cellular technology entered its first major rollout phase in 2019. In recent years, 5G adoption has been very visible among the consumer electronics industry, with 5G capabilities now being a key selling point for mid-tier to high-end mobile devices. Behind the scenes, however, there have been a number of developments designed to ... » read more

Engineering Test Station Facilitates Post-Silicon Validation
By Adir Zonta - 07 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor market is evolving, with devices becoming more complex as chip designers add cores and pursue 2.5D and 3D integration strategies. This complexity presents challenges extending from design and simulation through system-level test (SLT), where a device is exercised in mission mode, booting up an operating system and running end-user code, for example. These challenges arise f... » read more

Where Power Is Spent In HBM
By Ed Sperling - 06 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

HBM is gaining ground because of a spike in the amount of data that needs to be processed quickly, but big reductions in power are possible if that processing can be moved closer to the HBM modules, and if more can be done in each compute cycle without sending data back and forth to memory as frequently. Steven Woo, fellow and distinguished engineer at Rambus, talks about what can be done to bo... » read more

Chip Industry’s Earnings Roundup
By Linda Christensen - 06 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

Editor's Note: Updated throughout February 2023 for additional earnings releases. Many companies reported revenue growth in the most recent quarter, but the latest round of chip industry earnings releases reflected some major themes: Demand for consumer electronics softened due to inflation, rising interest rates, and post-pandemic market saturation, creating a slump in the memory chip ... » read more

When Less Can Be More With Smart Module Design: Part 1
By Jan Baurichter - 06 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

Size and power often seem like opposite sides of a coin. When you reduce size – one of the ever-pressing goals in our industry – you inevitably reduce power. But does that have to be the case? By shifting our thinking from the chip to the module design, there’s no need to flip a coin. In IGBT modules, chip shrinkage leads to an increased thermal impedance, which then impacts performanc... » read more

Research Bits: Feb. 6
By Jesse Allen - 06 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

Pillars for chiplet integration Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology proposed a new chiplet integration technology called Pillar-Suspended Bridge (PSB), which they say is a simpler method of chip-to-chip connection compared to silicon interposers and redistribution layers. In the PSB, only a pillar-shaped metal structure called a "MicroPillar" is interposed at the connection b... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test
By Karen Heyman - 03 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

Imec released its semiconductor roadmap, which calls for doubling compute power every six months to handle the data explosion and new data-intensive problems. Imec named five walls (scaling, memory, power, sustainability, cost) that need to be dismantled. The roadmap (below) stretches from 7nm to 0.2nm (2 angstroms) by 2036, and includes four generations of gate-all-around FETs followed by thre... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing
By SE Staff - 03 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

The United States Justice of Department asked Tesla for documents relating to its Autopilot driver assistance system and its Full Self-Driving (FSD). Among other tech company woes, some of which are leading to layoffs, Apple sales dropped 5% year over year and it missed its earnings target this quarter. The U.S. state of Kansas will commit $304M to Kansas-based OSAT Integra Technologies t... » read more

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