category: Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

The 200mm Equipment Scramble
By Ed Sperling - 23 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

An explosion in 200mm demand has set off a frenzied search for used semiconductor manufacturing equipment that can be used at older process nodes. The problem is there is not enough used equipment available, and not all of the new or expanding 200mm fabs can afford to pay the premium for refurbished or new equipment. This may sound like a straightforward supply and demand issue, but behind t... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 22
By Mark LaPedus - 22 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

Weighing protons The Max Planck Institute and Riken have conducted the world’s most precise measurement of the mass of a proton. Based on an experiment, researchers determined that the mass of a proton is 1.007276466583(15)(29) atomic mass units. This is three times more precise than the previous measurements from others. The numbers in parentheses refer to the statistical and systematic ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 18 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 2

Chipmakers Taiwan on Tuesday suffered a blackout after an accident occurred at a gas-fired plant, according to a report from Bloomberg. The outage, which lasted from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., impacted more than 6 million homes and disrupted some IC production on the island, according to the report. Taiwan’s president was criticized for the event, as the government plans to shutter the island’s nu... » read more

Machine Learning In The Fab
By Ed Sperling - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

Machine learning is exploding, especially where there are massive amounts of data to contend with and lots of potential interactions. This leads to two obvious insertion points in the semiconductor field. One is on the design side, where just getting an advanced design to function is an enormous challenge. That challenge increases as the need for reliability in some market increases. It's d... » read more

Silicon Wafers: M&A, Price Hikes
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers need to keep a close eye on the silicon wafer industry, as the business continues to undergo a number of changes. On one front, the silicon wafer industry continues to consolidate. Then, after years of suffering from an oversupply and falling prices, many silicon wafer vendors are experiencing tight supply and have begun to raise prices. Silicon wafers are a fundamental part of... » read more

Why Fabs Worry About Tool Parts
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 2

Achieving high yields with acceptable costs is becoming much more difficult as chipmakers migrate to next-generation 3D NAND and finFET devices—but not just because of rising complexity or lithography issues. To fabricate an advanced logic chip, for example, a wafer moves from one piece of equipment to another in what amounts to 1,000 process steps or more in a fab. Any glitch with the equ... » read more

Silicon Photonics: Solving Process Variation And Manufacturing Challenges
By Sandy Wen - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

As silicon photonics manufacturing gains momentum with additional foundry and 300mm offerings, process variation issues are coming to light. Variability in silicon processing affects the waveguide shape and can result in deviation in effective indices, propagation loss, and coupling efficiency from the intended design. In this article, we will highlight process variation issues that can occur i... » read more

Using Data To Improve Yield
By Jeff Dorsch - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor manufacturers are always looking for an edge to improve operating efficiency and to increase yields on chip lots. For some, the answers include big data analytics, as well as technology to move that data around more quickly. Chipmakers, board assemblers, and related businesses are turning to the Internet of Things, especially [getkc id="78" kc_name="Industrial IoT"] technology... » read more

Tech Talk: Smart Manufacturing
By Ed Sperling - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

Tom Salmon, vice president of collaborative technology platforms at SEMI, examines the electronics supply chain and what the industry organization is doing to pull all of the pieces together. https://youtu.be/jWX9mayMaZo Related Stories Smart Manufacturing Gains Momentum Problems remain for legacy infrastructure, but adoption will continue to grow as gaps are identified and plugged. ... » read more

What Is Spin Torque MRAM?
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

The memory market is going in several different directions at once. On one front, the traditional memory types, such as DRAM and flash, remain the workhorse technologies. Then, several vendors are readying the next-generation memory types. As part of an ongoing series, Semiconductor Engineering will explore where the new and traditional memory technologies are heading. For this segment, P... » read more

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