Old Vs. New Packages


Over the years, the semiconductor industry has witnessed a parade of packaging innovations, such as system-in-package, semiconductor embedded in substrate, and fan-out wafer-level packaging. Two interesting packaging innovations are now being used in the process of miniaturizing microchips and electronics. One is a new concept that combines two tried-and-true technologies. The other is a de... » read more

The Chiplet Race Begins


Momentum is building for the development of advanced packages and systems using so-called chiplets, but the technology faces some challenges in the market. A group led by DARPA, as well as Marvell, zGlue and others are pursuing chiplet technology, which is a different way of integrating multiple dies in a package or system. In fact, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part... » read more

Return Of The Organic Interposer


Organic interposers are resurfacing as an option in advanced packaging, several years after they were first proposed as a means of reducing costs in 2.5D multi-die configurations. There are several reasons why there is a renewed interest in this technology: More companies are pushing up against the limits of Moore's Law, where the cost of continuing to shrinking features is exorbitant. ... » read more

Auto Chip Test Getting Harder


Chipmakers and test/validation companies are helping lead the effort to develop self-driving cars, but they are facing a wide range of technical and even cultural barriers. Advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) already are the most complex systems by far in modern cars, the best of which hover between Level 2 and Level 3 on the five-step autonomy ladder maintained by the Society of Automotiv... » read more

New 5G Hurdles


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about challenges and progress in 5G with Yorgos Koutsoyannopoulos, president and CEO of Helic; Mike Fitton, senior director of strategic planning and business development at Achronix; Sarah Yost, senior product marketing manager at National Instruments; and Arvind Vel, director of product management at ANSYS. What follows are excerpts of that conversat... » read more

Bridges Vs. Interposers


The number of technology options continue to grow for advanced packaging, including new and different ways to incorporate so-called silicon bridges in products. For some time, Intel has offered a silicon bridge technology called Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), which makes use of a tiny piece of silicon with routing layers that connects one chip to another in an IC package. In ... » read more

How To Test Autonomous Vehicles


By Kevin Fogarty and Ed Sperling The race is on to develop ways of testing autonomous vehicles to prove they are safe under most road conditions, but this has turned out to be much more difficult than initially thought. The autonomous vehicle technology itself is still in various stages of development, with carmakers struggling to fine-tune AI algorithms that can guide robots on wheels th... » read more

Preparing For A 5G World


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about challenges and progress in 5G with Yorgos Koutsoyannopoulos, president and CEO of Helic; Mike Fitton, senior director of strategic planning and business development at Achronix; Sarah Yost, senior product marketing manager at National Instruments; and Arvind Vel, director of product management at ANSYS. What follows are excerpts of that conversat... » read more

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

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

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