Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers and OEMs At next week’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple is expected to roll out its long-awaited Arm-based Mac computers. This could provide a boost for Apple’s foundry vendor as well as equipment makers. It’s the worst-kept secret in the industry. As reported by the Apple sites, Apple is moving from Intel’s microprocessors to its own Arm-based chips for th... » read more

Spreading Out The Cost At 3nm


The current model for semiconductor scaling doesn't add up. While it's possible that markets will consolidate around a few basic designs, the likelihood is that no single SoC will sell in enough volume to compensate for the increased cost of design, equipment, mask sets and significantly more testing and inspection. In fact, even with slew of derivative chips, it may not be enough to tip the ec... » read more

The Next Advanced Packages


Packaging houses are readying their next-generation advanced IC packages, paving the way toward new and innovative system-level chip designs. These packages include new versions of 2.5D/3D technologies, chiplets, fan-out and even wafer-scale packaging. A given package type may include several variations. For example, vendors are developing new fan-out packages using wafers and panels. One is... » read more

Pandemics And Panic Chip Buying


U.S.-China trade tensions are creating uncertainty in the semiconductor market, but it is also causing another event right now—panic chip buying. At present, some but not all foundry vendors are seeing “rush orders” for select products and are running their fabs at full capacity. It’s not just leading-edge devices, but also mature technologies. A surge of chip orders started in Ma... » read more

Improving Reliability For GaN And SiC


Suppliers of gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) power devices are rolling out the next wave of products with some new and impressive specs. But before these devices are incorporated in systems, they must prove to be reliable. As with previous products, suppliers are quick to point out that the new devices are reliable, although there are some issues that can occasionally surface... » read more

Enabling Curvilinear Masks


This talk by Leo Pang, Chief Product Officer of D2S, takes a look at a unique GPU-accelerated approach to curvilinear inverse lithography technology (ILT) and introduces mask-wafer co-optimization (MWCO) that enables writing curvilinear ILT for 193i on VSB or multi-beam machines in 12 hours. » read more

Challenges For Compute-In-Memory Accelerators


A compute-in-memory (CIM) accelerator does not simply replace conventional logic. It's a lot more complicated than that. Regardless of the memory technology, the accelerator redefines the latency and energy consumption characteristics of the system as a whole. When the accelerator is built from noisy, low-precision computational elements, the situation becomes even more complex. Tzu-Hsian... » read more

The Future Of Mobility: Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared


By Bettina Weiss and Sven Beiker As the amount of electronics in automobiles continues to increase, it is becoming more common to hear a vehicle referred to as a “computer on wheels.” To that end, innovation occurs at the intersection of automotive and microelectronics so that leveraging synergies and contemplating joint initiatives becomes crucial in shaping the future of both fields. I... » read more

A Benchmark Study Of Complementary-Field Effect Transistor (CFET) Process Integration Options: Comparing Bulk vs. SOI vs. DSOI Starting Substrates


Sub-5 nm logic nodes will require an extremely high level of innovation to overcome the inherent real-estate limitations at this increased device density. One approach to increasing device density is to look at the vertical device dimension (z-direction), and stack devices on top of each other instead of conventionally side-by-side. The fabrication of a Complementary-Field Effect Transistor (CF... » read more

SEMI 3D1 – Terminology For Through Silicon via Geometrical Metrology


Clear and commonly accepted definitions are needed for efficient communication and to prevent misunderstanding between buyers and vendors of metrology equipment and manufacturing services. The purpose of this document is to provide a consistent terminology for the understanding and discussion of metrology issues important to through silicon vias (TSV). Click here to read more, fee for access. » read more

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