The Growing Materials Challenge


By Katherine Derbyshire & Ed Sperling Materials have emerged as a growing challenge across the semiconductor supply chain, as chips continue to scale, or as they are utilized in new devices such as sensors for AI or machine learning systems. Engineered materials are no longer optional at advanced nodes. They are now a requirement, and the amount of new material content in chips contin... » read more

The Best in Test


“The 10 Best Semiconductor Equipment Supplier Rankings for 2018” was recently released by VLSI Research. Teradyne and Advantest placed first and second, respectively, in the large-company rankings, each rating five stars, based on evaluations by customers. Xcerra placed fifth in the focused-company rankings, with four-and-a-half stars. The market research firm also ranked the top vendors... » read more

Generating And Debugging Constraints For High-Speed Serial Instruments


This white paper addresses the specific need for designing constraints into your NI PXIe-6591R or PXIe-6592R High Speed Serial project. Constraints are an often overlooked requirement of the project and can take several weeks to analyze timing requirements on a design, implement constraints, and achieving successful compilations that pass timing. This guide will help reduce the amount of time s... » read more

Temporary Bonding: Enabling the Next Generation of Ultrathin Wafers


Innovative materials are critical for maintaining integrity during advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes. Temporary bonding is being enabled by these new materials and is making a name for itself in the next generation of ultrathin wafer manufacturing. Semiconductor wafers are being forced to become thinner as the push to shrink feature sizes and introduce full-scale 3D integration ... » read more

Extending The IC Roadmap


An Steegen, executive vice president of semiconductor technology and systems at Imec, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss IC scaling and chip packaging. Imec is working on next-generation transistors, but it is also developing several new technologies for IC packaging, such as a proprietary silicon bridge, a cooling technology and packaging modules. What follows are excerpts of t... » read more

Tech Talk: 5G Everywhere


Sarah Yost, senior product marketing manager at National Instruments, talks about the promise of 5G, where it works and where it doesn’t work, and why it’s so critical for so many different markets. https://youtu.be/CzxdrrhSvGY » read more

Heart Of A Champion


The National Football League’s (NFL) pre-season games begin on August 2. To many of us, players in the NFL represent the toughest of the tough, combining size, speed and strength. But before we invest all of our expendable income on the game-worn jerseys of rifle-armed quarterbacks or the next “megatron” wide receivers, consider the accomplishments of those NFL players who have excelled i... » read more

Putting “Design” Back Into Design For Test In PCB Products


Design for manufacturing (DFM) has become a proactive part of the design process, but the same cannot be said for DFT. Whereas “left-shifting” DFM has reduced manufacturing problems, increased yield, reduced scrap levels, and simplified engineering rework, testability-related improvements have stayed flat during that same time. Unfortunately, as assembly costs have come down, and test-relat... » read more

Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation, Testing


Embedded electronics are showing up nearly everywhere these days, in cars, smart appliances, medical devices—even fighter jets. Making sure those real-time embedded systems will work correctly is the aim of hardware-in-the-loop simulation and testing, which puts the systems through their paces in a virtual environment. In effect, HIL simulation adds a mathematical representation of all fun... » read more

Innovative Scalable Design-Based Care Area Methodology For Defect Monitoring In Production


By Ian Tolle, GlobalFoundries, and Ankit Jain, KLA-Tencor Abstract The use of design-based care areas on inspection tools [1, 2] to characterize defects has been well established in recent years. However, the implementation has generally been limited to specific engineering use cases, due to the complexity involved with care area creation and inspection recipe setup. Furthermore, creating, ... » read more

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