category: Top Stories

category: Auto, Security & Edge AI

Monitoring IC Abnormalities Before Failures
By Anne Meixner - 07 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 0

The rising complexities of semiconductor processes and design are driving an increasing use of on-chip monitors to support data analytics from an IC’s birth through its end of life — no matter how long that projected lifespan. Engineers have long used on-chip circuitry to assist with manufacturing test, silicon debug and failure analysis. Providing visibility and controllability of inter... » read more

Data Becomes Key For Next-Gen Chips
By SE Staff - 07 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 1

Data has become vital to understanding the useful life of a semiconductor — and the knowledge gleaned is key to staying competitive beyond Moore’s Law. What's changed is a growing reliance earlier in the design cycle on multiple sources of data, including some from further right in the design-through-manufacturing flow. While this holistic approach may seem logical enough, the semiconduc... » read more

Making Silicon Photonics Chips More Reliable
By Ed Sperling - 09 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

Silicon photonics has the ability to dramatically improve on-die and chip-to-chip communication within a package at extremely low power, but ensuring that signal integrity remains consistent over time isn't so simple. While this technology has been used commercially for at least the past decade, it never has achieved mainstream status. That's mostly due to the fact that Moore's Law scaling h... » read more

Using Fab Sensors To Reduce Auto Defects
By Anne Meixner - 09 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem has begun collaborating on ways to effectively use wafer data to meet the stringent quality and reliability requirements for automotive ICs. Silicon manufacturing companies are now leveraging equipment and inspection monitors to proactively identify impactful defects prior to electrical test. Using machine learning techniques, they combine the monitor ... » read more

Challenges In Making Better Medical Sensors
By SE Staff - 09 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

Now that COVID-19 pandemic has desensitized us to telemedicine and more at-home health monitoring, the way we receive health care probably has changed for good. The no-touch thermometer and our personal pulse oximeter are not just coveted gadgets now. They have true clinical use in what may become a “point-of-use” system. Point of use means we don’t have to go to the clinic to get screene... » read more

BiST Vs. In-Circuit Sensors
By SE Staff - 13 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

Monitoring the health of a chip post-manufacturing, including how it is aging and performing over time, is becoming much more important as ICs make their way into safety-critical applications such as the central brain in automobiles. Faced with longer lifespans and a growing body of functional safety rules, systems vendors need to be able to predict when a part will fail. But as sensing auto... » read more

New Uses For Manufacturing Data
By Ed Sperling - 12 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry is becoming more reliant on data analytics to ensure that a chip will work as expected over its projected lifetime, but that data is frequently inconsistent or incomplete, and some of the most useful data is being hoarded by companies for competitive reasons. The volume of data is rising at each new process node, where there are simply more things to keep track of,... » read more

Sensing Automotive IC Failures
By Anne Meixner - 12 May, 2020 - Comments: 1

The sooner you detect a failure in any electronic system, the sooner you can act. Together, data analytics and on-chip sensors are poised to boost quality in auto chips and add a growing level of predictive maintenance for vehicles. The ballooning number of chips cars makes it difficult to reach 10 defective parts per billion for every IC that goes into a car.  And requiring that for a 15-y... » read more

An Inside Look At Testing’s Leading Edge
By Ed Sperling - 12 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

Mike Slessor, president and CEO of FormFactor, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss testing of AI and 5G chips, and why getting power into a chip for testing is becoming more difficult at each new node. SE: How does test change with AI chips, where you've got massive numbers of accelerators and processors developed at 7 and 5nm? Slessor: A lot of the AI stuff that we've been... » read more

NVM Reliability Challenges And Tradeoffs
By Bryon Moyer - 13 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 0

This second of two parts looks at different memories and possible solutions. Part one can be found here. While various NVM technologies, such as PCRAM, MRAM, ReRAM and NRAM share similar high-level traits, their physical renderings are quite different. That provides each with its own set of challenges and solutions. PCRAM has had a fraught history. Initially released by Samsung, Micron, a... » read more

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