The 5G mmWave Commercialization Effort Is Underway


By David Vondran and Rodrigo Carrillo-Ramirez 5G broadband cellular technology entered its first major rollout phase in 2019. In recent years, 5G adoption has been very visible among the consumer electronics industry, with 5G capabilities now being a key selling point for mid-tier to high-end mobile devices. Behind the scenes, however, there have been a number of developments designed to ... » read more

Engineering Test Station Facilitates Post-Silicon Validation


The semiconductor market is evolving, with devices becoming more complex as chip designers add cores and pursue 2.5D and 3D integration strategies. This complexity presents challenges extending from design and simulation through system-level test (SLT), where a device is exercised in mission mode, booting up an operating system and running end-user code, for example. These challenges arise f... » read more

Scan Pattern Portability From PSV To ATE To SLT To IST


By Ash Patel and Karthik Natarajan Chip testing has become increasingly complex due to the number of variables impacting designs – from design size and complexity, to high transistor counts on advanced technology nodes, to 2.5D/3D packaging, to manufacturing variability. All of these combine to make testing today's chips and packages more complicated than ever before. The number of test pa... » read more

Screening For Silent Data Errors


Engineers are beginning to understand the causes of silent data errors (SDEs) and the data center failures they cause, both of which can be reduced by increasing test coverage and boosting inspection on critical layers. Silent data errors are so named because if engineers don’t look for them, then they don’t know they exist. Unlike other kinds of faulty behaviors, these errors also can c... » read more

Metrology Options Increase As Device Needs Shift


Semiconductor fabs are taking an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to solving tough metrology and yield management challenges, combining tools, processes, and other technologies as the chip industry transitions to nanosheet transistors on the front end and heterogenous integration on the back end. Optical and e-beam tools are being extended, while X-ray inspection is being added on a case-by-... » read more

Looking Inside Of Chips


Shai Cohen, co-founder and CEO of proteanTecs, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about how to boost reliability and add resiliency into chips and advanced packaging. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Several years ago, no one was thinking about on-chip monitoring. What's changed? Cohen: Today it is obvious that a solution is needed for optimizing performanc... » read more

Emerging Technologies Are Driving System Level Test Adoption


With the size of semiconductor transistors decreasing and chip complexity increasing exponentially, semiconductor test has become essential to ensuring that only high-quality products go to market. With the introduction of more rigorous acceptable quality level (AQL) certifications, test methods must constantly evolve to meet these standards, and system level test (SLT) and traditional test... » read more

Reducing Simulation Regression Turnaround Time With Dynamic Performance Optimization


No single step in the development of semiconductor devices is more sensitive to speed than functional simulation. A modern system-on-chip (SoC) design simulates billions of cycles of operation in the process of completing the verification plan and achieving coverage goals. To validate full system functionality, many of these simulations include running code on one or more embedded processors. E... » read more

IR Laser Imaging Is Rapidly Changing IR Microscopy


IR laser imaging is finally being commercialized into smart analytical equipment. New applications continue to emerge and yield massive advantages, thanks to the direct combination with FT-IR technology. The application notes below provide valuable insights into three applications of IR laser imaging: Tissue imaging Surface analysis Forensic science Click here to read more. » read more

Industrial Solutions For Machine-Learning-Enabled Yield Optimization And Test


This article summarizes the content of a paper developed and presented by Advantest at ETS 2022. By Sonny Banwari and Matthias Sauer According to market research firm Gartner, Inc., in assessing the completion rate of data science projects, as well as the bottom-line value they generate for their companies, only between 15 and 20 percent of these projects are ever completed. Moreover, of ... » read more

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