Fins And Wires – How Do We Get To 5nm?


As the industry moves beyond 10nm to the 7nm and 5nm nodes, fundamental shifts are needed to address scaling challenges. Among the priority concerns driving industry changes, particularly with respect to materials and architecture, is the impact on transistor performance from rising parasitic resistance and parasitic capacitance or RC. I spoke about this industry dilemma recently at the SEMICON... » read more

Device Pin-Specific Property Extraction For Layout Simulation


As we work through the sub-20 nm design space, the interactions between and effects on devices that are near each other are becoming critical factors in achieving the desired electrical performance. Accurate extraction of device pin-specific properties for modelling these effects is essential to attaining design goals. LVS extraction challenges Layout vs. schematic (LVS) comparison tools prov... » read more

Making Phones Better


Beneath a smartphone's slick packaging is some interesting, highly sophisticated technology that makes the user experience what it is today. Much of that experience relies on satisfying our ever growing desire for more data capacity for video, social media and the like. Providing that capacity relies on robust filtering to receive just your data stream amongst many nearby other streams. But tha... » read more

Are We Looking At The IoT Through Rose-Colored Glasses?


There’s been a lot of anticipation and promise associated with the explosive growth expected from the deployment of the Internet of Things. The prospect of 30 billion to 50 billion connected devices and all the associated electronics brings rosy visions of a return to double-digit semiconductor industry growth rates. Let’s take a look at the realities of the impending impact. MEMS, ... » read more

From Uncertainty To New Markets


The 11th annual SEMI/Gartner Market Symposium at SEMICON West 2016 presented diverse perspectives on trends and developments in the macroeconomic environment as well as the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. The themes have significant and immediate impact on the industry and include economic uncertainty, Brexit, China’s ambitious plans for an indigenous chip industry, and evolving end... » read more

Roots Of Distrust Spread


For most of the history of semiconductors there has been a persistent fear that someone would steal intellectual property from one company and sell it to another. There have been innumerable lawsuits involving corporate secrets that cross from one company to the next, and from one country to the next. The biggest concerns always were at the leading edges of technology, where those secrets w... » read more

5 Takeaways From Semicon


As usual, the recent Semicon West trade show was a busy, if not an overwhelming, event. The event, which took place in San Francisco in early July, featured presentations on the usual subjects in the semiconductor and IC-equipment sectors. There were sessions on 200mm, next-generation processes, transistors, lithography, MEMS and many others. In no particular order, here are my five ta... » read more

Material And Process Challenges In A Changing Memory Landscape


Moore’s Law has fueled the semiconductor industry’s growth for decades. But as the complexity of scaling increases, extending the economics of Moore’s Law is becoming a challenge. One example illustrating the challenges of maintaining the economic benefits of Moore’s Law is the difficulty of IC chip patterning. Today, this requires an expensive litho scanner, a complicated spacer and... » read more

Colorless vs. Colored Double-Patterning Design Flows


Colored vs. Colorless double patterning design flows—do you know which one is best for your design? What options does your foundry allow? Do you debug one differently from the other? In this short video, I’ll demonstrate the differences between colored and colorless DP design flows, and explain the options and potential pitfalls of each approach. With a better understanding of how to design... » read more

Pattern Dependence Process Modeling


First order process modeling can help tremendously with process setup and integration challenges that occur in a semiconductor fabrication flow, by visualizing process variation problems “virtually” prior to actual fabrication. In some instances, a deeper level of complexity needs to be added to the process model to capture the effects of variation in the process. Specific examples inclu... » read more

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