category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Using Manufacturing Data To Boost Reliability
By Ed Sperling and Ann Mutschler - 07 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

As chipmakers turn to increasingly customized and complex heterogeneous designs to boost performance per watt, they also are demanding lower defectivity and higher yields to help offset the rising design and manufacturing costs. Solving those issues is a mammoth multi-vendor effort. There can be hundreds of process steps in fabs and packaging houses. And as feature sizes continue to shrink, ... » read more

Speeding Up Scan-Based Volume Diagnosis
By Bryon Moyer - 07 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

In the critical process known as new-product bring-up, it’s a race to get new products to yield as quickly as possible. But the interplay between increasingly complex aspects of designs and process makes it difficult to find root causes of yield issues so they can be fixed quickly. Advanced processes have very high defectivity, and learning must be fast and effective. While progress has be... » read more

Big Payback For Combining Different Types Of Fab Data
By Anne Meixner - 07 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 1

Collecting and combining diverse data types from different manufacturing processes can play a significant role in improving semiconductor yield, quality, and reliability, but making that happen requires integrating deep domain expertise from various different process steps and sifting through huge volumes of data scattered across a global supply chain. The semiconductor manufacturing IC data... » read more

Enablers And Barriers For Connecting Diverse Data
By Anne Meixner - 09 Nov, 2021 - Comments: 0

More data is being collected at every step of the manufacturing process, raising the possibility of combining data in new ways to solve engineering problems. But this is far from simple, and combining results is not always possible. The semiconductor industry’s thirst for data has created oceans of it from the manufacturing process. In addition, semiconductor designs large and small now ha... » read more

More Errors, More Correction in Memories
By Bryon Moyer - 09 Nov, 2021 - Comments: 1

As memory bit cells of any type become smaller, bit error rates increase due to lower margins and process variation. This can be dealt with using error correction to account for and correct bit errors, but as more sophisticated error-correction codes (ECC) are used, it requires more silicon area, which in turn drives up the cost. Given this trend, the looming question is whether the cost of ... » read more

Coping With Parallel Test Site-to-Site Variation
By Anne Meixner - 09 Nov, 2021 - Comments: 1

Testing multiple devices in parallel using the same ATE results in reduced test time and lower costs, but it requires engineering finesse to make it so. Minimizing test measurement variation for each device under test (DUT) is a multi-physics problem, and it's one that is becoming more essential to resolve at each new process node and in multi-chip packages. It requires synchronization of el... » read more

Inspecting, Testing, And Measuring SiC
By Patrick Waurzyniak - 12 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 0

Achieving the auto industry's stringent zero defect goals is becoming a big challenge for makers of silicon carbide substrates, which are struggling to achieve sufficient yields and reliability as they migrate from 150mm to 200mm wafers and shift their focus away from pure silicon. SiC is a combination of silicon and harder carbide materials, and it has emerged as a key technology for batter... » read more

One Test Is Not Always Enough
By Anne Meixner - 12 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 0

To improve yield, quality, and cost, two separate test parameters can be combined to determine if a part passes or fails. The results gleaned from that approach are more accurate, allowing test and quality engineers to fail parts sooner, detect more test escapes, and ultimately to improve yield and reduce manufacturing costs. New data analytic platforms, combined with better utilization of s... » read more

PCB And IC Technologies Meet In The Middle
By Bryon Moyer - 12 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 1

Surface-mount technology (SMT) is evolving far beyond its roots as a way of assembling packaged chips onto printed circuit boards without through-holes. It is now moving inside packages that will themselves be mounted on PCBs. But SMT for advanced packages isn’t the same as the SMT we’ve been used to. “Many systems include multiple ASICs, a lot of memory, and that's all integrated i... » read more

New Memories Add New Faults
By Bryon Moyer - 07 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 1

New non-volatile memories (NVM) bring new opportunities for changing how we use memory in systems-on-chip (SoCs), but they also add new challenges for making sure they will work as expected. These new memory types – primarily MRAM and ReRAM – rely on unique physical phenomena for storing data. That means that new test sequences and fault models may be needed before they can be released t... » read more

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