Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Liz Allan, and Gregory Haley. TSMC rolled out the second version of its 3Dblox, which creates an infrastructure for stacking chiplets and other necessary components in a package, along with a standardized way of achieving that. Two novel features are chiplet mirroring for design reuse, and what is basically sandbox for power and thermal analysis of different design elements. ... » read more

Data Management Challenges In Heterogeneous Systems


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss issues in smart manufacturing of chips, including data management, chiplets, and standards, with Mujtaba Hamid, general manager for product management for secure cloud environments at Microsoft; Vijaykishan Narayanan, vice president and general manager of India engineering and operations at proteanTecs; KT Moore, vice presiden... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) announced $238 million in awards toward establishing eight regional innovation hubs under the CHIPS and Science Act. The hubs aim to accelerate hardware prototyping and "lab-to-fab" transition of semiconductor technologies for secure edge/IoT, 5G/6G, AI hardware, quantum technology, electromagnetic warfare, and ... » read more

Building Better Bridges In Advanced Packaging


The increasing challenges and rising cost of logic scaling, along with demands for an increasing number of features, are pushing more companies into advanced packaging. And while that opens up a slew of new options, it also is causing widespread confusion over what works best for different processes and technologies. At its core, advanced packaging depends on reliable interconnects, well-def... » read more

When And Where To Implement AI/ML In Fabs


Deciphering complex interactions between variables is where machine learning and deep learning shine, but figuring out exactly how ML-based systems will be most useful is the job of engineers. The challenge is in pairing their domain expertise with available ML tools to maximize the value of both. This depends on sufficient quantities of good data, highly optimized algorithms, and proper tra... » read more

Ferroelectric Memories Answer Call For Non-Volatile Alternatives


As system designers seek to manipulate larger data sets while reducing power consumption, ferroelectric memory may be part of the solution. It offers an intermediate step between the speed of DRAM and the stability of flash memory. Changing the polarization of ferroelectric domains is extremely fast, and the polarization remains stable without power for years, if not decades. FeFETs, one of ... » read more

Reverse Laser Assisted Bonding (R-LAB) Technology For Chiplet Module Bonding On Substrate


By SeokHo Na, MinHo Gim, GaHyeon Kim, DongSu Ryu, DongJoo Park, and JinYoung Kim In the recent semiconductor market, there are many applications including smartphone, tablets, central processing units (CPUs), artificial intelligence (AI), data cloud and more that are expecting and experiencing rapid growth. As most of these applications require high performance, single-die Flip Chip packages... » read more

Why Curvy Design Now? Manufacturing Is Possible And Scaling Needs It


Have you ever seen roots or tree branches take a 90-degree turn? Have you ever seen a river that takes a 90-degree turn? Nature doesn’t do 90-degree turns, or for that matter any sharp angle turns – not even 135 degrees. Yet the entire chip-design infrastructure is based on the Manhattan assumption of 90-degree turns. While it would take time to change, is there any doubt that a curvilinea... » read more

5 Reasons Why Defect Reduction Is Critical In Semiconductor Material Success


Semiconductors may be small, but the impacts they have are significant. Semiconductors used in life-dependent applications, such as pacemakers, defibrillators, life support systems, automotive safety systems, or in aviation need to be fail-proof. A device smaller than a centimeter with features just a few nanometers has no margin of error. This blog shares why it’s important to detect materia... » read more

New Plasma Power Technologies For Next-Gen Semiconductor Manufacturing


As chip designs push the limits of speed, size and complexity, the semiconductor industry has set its sights on angstrom-scale device features. High-speed, precise and repeatable plasma power delivery with sophisticated controls is fundamental to process and device improvements. These factors support inflection points in technologies from chip-scale packaging through advanced front-end technolo... » read more

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