category: Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 17
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Intel’s gate-all-around FETs At the upcoming IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Intel is expected to present papers on its efforts to develop gate-all-around transistors. One paper from Intel describes a more conventional gate-all-around transistor technology called a nanosheet FET. Another paper involves a next-generation NMOS-on-PMOS nanoribbon transistor technology. (F... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Mark LaPedus - 13 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers and OEMs Apple has introduced a new MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini powered by the M1, the first in a family of chips designed by Apple specifically for the Mac. Based on a 5nm process from TSMC, the M1 is packed with 16 billion transistors, the most Apple has ever put into a chip. It features a CPU core, graphics, AI and other functions all in the same chip. In total... » read more

Challenges Linger For EUV
By Mark LaPedus - 11 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 2

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss lithography and photomask issues with Bryan Kasprowicz, director of technology and strategy and a distinguished member of the technical staff at Photronics; Harry Levinson, principal at HJL Lithography; Noriaki Nakayamada, senior technologist at NuFlare; and Aki Fujimura, chief executive of D2S. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To vie... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 9
By Mark LaPedus - 09 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Open-source EUV resist metrology Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) has developed an open-source software technology for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) applications. The technology is targeted for EUV resist metrology. The technology, called SMILE (SEM-Measured Image Lines Estimator), is an open source software technology, which characterizes line and space patterns in a SEM. SMILE is used t... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Mark LaPedus - 06 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers Earlier this year, the semiconductor industry saw little merger and acquisition activity. More recently, though, there has been a flurry of deals. In July, ADI moved to acquire Maxim. Then, Nvidia announced plans to acquire Arm for $40 billion, followed by AMD’s proposed move to buy Xilinx for $35 billion. Not to be outdone, Marvell has announced plans to buy Inphi. Companies a... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 3
By Mark LaPedus - 03 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Zeptosecond measurements A group of researchers have set a new world’s record for the shortest timespan measurement. DESY, Fritz-Haber-Institute and Goethe University Frankfurt have measured how long it takes for a photon to cross a hydrogen molecule. The result? About 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second (10-21 seconds). This is said to be the sh... » read more

Micro Loading And Its Impact On Device Performance
By Qingpeng Wang - 02 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

In a DRAM structure, the charging and discharging process of capacitor-based memory cells is directly controlled by the transistor [1]. With transistor sizes approaching the lower limits of physical achievability, manufacturing variability and micro loading effects are becoming increasingly critical DRAM performance (and yield) limiters. The transistor’s AA (active area) dimension and profile... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Mark LaPedus - 30 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

Trade and government The U.S. continues to tighten its export controls for hi-tech, including a move to restrict fab technologies that enable 5nm chip production. The U.S. Department of Commerce has imposed controls on six more technologies, bringing the total to 37. They include: hybrid additive manufacturing/computer controlled tools; computational lithography software designed for EUV masks... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 27
By Mark LaPedus - 27 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

Single-molecule switches A group of researchers have demonstrated a single-molecule switch or electret, a technology that could one day enable a new class of non-volatile memory storage devices. Yale University, Nanjing University, Renmin University, Xiamen University, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have demonstrated a single-molecule electret with functional memory. Still in ... » read more

Rethinking The Scaling Mantra
By Ed Sperling - 26 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

What makes a new chip better than a previous version, or a competitor's version, has been changing for some time. In most cases the key metrics are still performance and power, but what works for one application or use case increasingly is different from another. Advancements are rarely tied just to process nodes these days. Even the most die-hard proponents of Moore's Law recognize that the... » read more

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