Looking Forward To The New Chip Cycle


Charles Shi, Principal and Senior Analyst at Needham & Company, LLC., remains upbeat about the EDA, IP and services business, or what SEMI refers to as the electronic system design (ESD) ecosystem. I recently spoke with Shi about his talk “Looking Forward to the New Chip Cycle” during the opening of the 2023 Design Automation Conference, collocated in July with SEMICON West in San Fra... » read more

Negative-Tone Photosensitive Polymeric Bonding Material To Enable Room Temperature Prebond For Cu/Polymer Hybrid Bonding


An evaluation of a negative-tone i-line photosensitive polymeric bonding material for achieving prebonding in Cu/polymer hybrid bonding at low temperatures via the Cu damascene process. The polymeric material has a Tg≤100∘C ; Young’s modulus of 99 MPa, the dielectric constant of 2.6, and dissipation factor of 0.0016 at 10 GHz. Shear tests revealed a bond shear strength of over 10 MPa when... » read more

AI Process Control Platform Enabling Next Generation Technology, Part 2


As feature dimensions in semiconductors continue to shrink and worldwide demand continues to expand, semiconductor equipment manufacturers need innovative ways to compete and deliver. The Tignis PAICe Maker physics-driven AI computational modeling platform accelerates leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing—from equipment R&D to reliable high-yield chip fabrication capability. Tignis sup... » read more

Survey: 2023 eBeam Initiative Luminaries Survey Results


Luminaries are confident in high-NA EUV and curvilinear masks 12th Annual Luminaries Survey — July 2023 • Luminaries remain confident in broad High-NA EUV adoption by 2028 • Confidence doubled in leading-edge mask shops handling curvilinear mask demand • Curvilinear masks aren’t just for EUV • Luminaries are more confident about 2023 mask revenues than SEMI Click here to rea... » read more

Chip Industry Talent Shortage Drives Academic Partnerships


Universities around the world are forming partnerships with semiconductor companies and governments to help fill open and future positions, to keep curricula current and relevant, and to update and expand skills for working engineers. Talent shortages repeatedly have been cited as the number one challenge for the chip industry. Behind those concerns are several key drivers, and many more dom... » read more

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

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