category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Test Costs Spiking
By Ed Sperling - 10 Mar, 2020 - Comments: 1

The cost of test is rising as a percentage of manufacturing costs, fueled by concerns about reliability of advanced-node designs in cars and data centers, as well as extended lifetimes for chips in those and other markets. For decades, test was limited to a flat 2% of total manufacturing cost, a formula developed prior to the turn of the Millennium after chipmakers and foundries saw the traj... » read more

Taming Novel NVM Non-Determinism
By Bryon Moyer - 10 Mar, 2020 - Comments: 1

New memory technologies may have non-deterministic characteristics that add calibration to the test burden — and may require recalibration during their lifetime. Many of these memories are in development as a result of the search for a storage-class memory (SCM) technology that can bridge the gap between larger, slower memories like flash and faster DRAM memory. There are several approache... » read more

Grading Chips For Longer Lifetimes
By Ed Sperling - 10 Mar, 2020 - Comments: 0

Figuring out how to grade chips is becoming much more difficult as these chips are used in applications where they are supposed to last for decades rather than just a couple of years. During manufacturing, semiconductors typically are run through a battery of tests involving performance and power, and then priced accordingly. But that is no longer a straightforward process for several reason... » read more

Logic Chip, Heal Thyself
By SE Staff - 11 Feb, 2020 - Comments: 0

If a single fault can kill a logic chip, that doesn’t bode well for longevity of complex multi-chip systems. Obsolescence in chips is not just an industry ploy to sell more chips. It is a fact of physics that chips don’t last more than a few years, especially if overheated, and hit with higher voltage than it can stand. The testing industry does a great job finding defects during manufac... » read more

More Data, More Problems In Automotive
By Anne Meixner - 11 Feb, 2020 - Comments: 0

The race toward increasing levels of autonomy is being hampered by competitive concerns over sharing data across the automotive supply chain. Pushing past the initial ADAS levels into full autonomy is expected to take more than a decade, but the infrastructure for those systems, and making sure all assisted and autonomous vehicles work with other vehicles, is under development today. Still, ... » read more

Failure Analysis Becoming Critical To Reliability
By Ed Sperling - 11 Feb, 2020 - Comments: 0

Failure analysis is rapidly becoming a complex, costly and increasingly time-consuming must-do task as demand rises for reliability across a growing range of devices used in markets ranging from automotive to 5G. From the beginning, failure analysis has been about finding out what went wrong in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Different approaches, tools and equipment have improved ov... » read more

Making 3D Structures And Packages More Reliable
By Ed Sperling - 14 Jan, 2020 - Comments: 0

The move to smaller vertical structures and complex packaging schemes is straining existing testing approaches, particularly in heterogeneous combinations on a single chip and in multi-die packages. The complexity of these devices has exploded with the slowdown in scaling, as chipmakers turn to architectural solutions and new transistor structures rather than just relying on shrinking featur... » read more

Automakers Changing Tactics On Reliability
By SE Staff - 14 Jan, 2020 - Comments: 0

Automakers are beginning to rethink how to ensure automotive electronics will remain reliable over their projected lifetimes, focusing their efforts on redundancy, more data-centric architectures and continued testing throughout the life of a vehicle. It is still too early to really know how automotive chips actually will perform over the next 15 to 20 years, especially AI logic developed at... » read more

Big Growth Areas: Connectivity, AI, Reliability
By Brian Bailey - 14 Jan, 2020 - Comments: 0

Connectivity and artificial intelligence (AI) will be the biggest drivers for 2020, with an emphasis on improved reliability across all areas. New standards, new applications, and new pressures being placed on old technology will created boundless opportunities for those ready to fill the need. Of course, there will also be a lot of carnage along the way, and we can expect to see a lot of that ... » read more

The Growing Challenges Of 5G Reliability
By SE Staff - 10 Dec, 2019 - Comments: 0

The test field is getting more complicated as chips become larger, more heterogeneous, and subject to almost constant changes. Nowhere is this more evident than in 5G, where standards are still evolving and use cases are still being defined. Without passing test, no technology advances. But those definitions are subject to change, and they can change again over time. The communications in... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

Copyright ©2013-2025 SMG   |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy