category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

New Challenges Emerge With High-NA EUV
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 3

High numerical aperture EUV exposure systems are coming — as soon as 2025 by some estimates. Though certainly a less profound change than the introduction of extreme ultraviolet lithography, high-NA lithography still brings a new set of challenges for photoresists and related materials. With a higher numerical aperture, photons strike the wafer at a shallower angle. That requires thinner p... » read more

Cooling The Data Center
By Karen Heyman - 15 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

Since British mathematician and entrepreneur Clive Humby coined the rallying cry, “Data is the new oil,” some 20 years ago, it has been an upbeat phrase at data science conferences. But in engineering circles, that increasingly includes a daily grind of hardware challenges, and chief among them is how to cool the places where all that data is processed and stored. An estimated 65 zettaby... » read more

Self-Heating Issues Spread
By Brian Bailey - 13 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 1

With every new node there are additional physical effects that must be considered, but not all of them are of the same level of criticality. One that is being mentioned more frequently is self-heating. All devices consume power and when they do that, it becomes heat. "In essence, all active devices generate heat as carriers move, creating channels for current to pass through the gates," says... » read more

Uneven Circuit Aging Becoming A Bigger Problem
By Ann Mutschler - 09 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

Circuit aging is emerging as a first-order design challenge as engineering teams look for new ways to improve reliability and ensure the functionality of chips throughout their expected lifetimes. The need for reliability is obvious in data centers and automobiles, where a chip failure could result in downtime or injury. It also is increasingly important in mobile and consumer electronics, w... » read more

What Makes RISC-V Verification Unique?
By Brian Bailey - 09 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the verification of RISC-V processors with Pete Hardee, group director for product management at Cadence; Mike Eftimakis, vice president for strategy and ecosystem at Codasip; Simon Davidmann, founder and CEO of Imperas Software; Sven Beyer, program manager for processor verification at Siemens EDA; Kiran Vittal, senior director of alliances partner... » read more

MIPI’s Focus Widens
By Ed Sperling - 09 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

Ashraf Takla, president and CEO of Mixel, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the evolution of MIPI, from mobile displays to automotive, chiplets, and how the standard is evolving to keep up with increasing data volumes. SE: There has been a lot of activity around MIPI in automotive. What's driving that? Takla: One of the early use-cases for MIPI, after Mobile has been ... » read more

Startup Funding: February 2023
By Jesse Allen - 08 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

The cost of borrowing is going up, but investors continued to pour money into the chip industry in February. Collectively, 132 companies raised more than $4.5 billion last month. One of the big beneficiaries was quantum computing, with nine companies drawing a total of more than $500 million. The bulk of that went to a quantum software and services company spun out of Alphabet, but plenty wa... » read more

Metrology Strategies For 2nm Processes
By Laura Peters - 07 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 3

Metrology and wafer inspection processes are changing to keep up with evolving and new device applications. While fab floors still have plenty of OCD tools, ellipsometers, and CD-SEMs, new systems are taking on the increasingly 3D nature of structures and the new materials they incorporate. For instance, processes like hybrid bonding, 3D NAND flash devices, and nanosheet FETs are pushing the bo... » read more

Test Challenges Mount As Demands For Reliability Increase
By Anne Meixner - 07 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

An emphasis of improving semiconductor quality is beginning to spread well beyond just data centers and automotive applications, where ICs play a role in mission- and safety-critical applications. But this focus on improved reliability is ratcheting up pressure throughout the test community, from lab to fab and into the field, in products where transistor density continues to grow — and wh... » read more

Standards: The Next Step For Silicon Photonics
By Karen Heyman - 07 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

Testing silicon photonics is becoming more critical and more complicated as the technology is used in new applications ranging from medicine to cryptography, lidar, and quantum computing, but how to do that in a way that is both consistent and predictable is still unresolved. For the past three decades, photonics largely has been an enabler for high-speed communications, a lucrative market t... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

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