The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Market research For some time, DRAM shortages have plagued the market. Today, the situation remains the same. DRAMs are seeing strong demand. But yet, vendors are not adding any capacity. “Strained DRAM supply was even more evident during the third quarter as limited production capacity and limited technological progress for the memory industry encountered robust demand from data centers in ... » read more

Another Dimension For Virtual Reality


When you put on a virtual reality (VR) headset, you are connecting visually to another place—real or imagined. Most people connect VR with gaming, but increasingly business, industry and government users are finding new applications for the evolving technology. These applications, and many more to come, will help drive the adoption of VR and the devices used to access virtual environments. ... » read more

Variation Spreads At 10/7nm


Variation between different manufacturing equipment is becoming increasingly troublesome as chipmakers push to 10/7nm and beyond. Process variation is a well-known phenomenon at advanced nodes. But some of that is actually due to variations in equipment—sometimes the exact same model from the same vendor. Normally this would fall well below the radar of the semiconductor industry. But as t... » read more

What’s Next For Atomic Layer Etch?


After years in R&D, several fab tool vendors last year finally began to ship systems based a next-generation technology called atomic layer etch (ALE). [getkc id="284" kc_name="ALE"] is is moving into 16/14nm, but it will play a big role at 10/7nm and beyond. The industry also is working on the next wave of ALE technology for advanced logic and memory production. Used by chipmakers fo... » read more

Overlay Challenges On The Rise


The overlay metrology equipment market is heating up at advanced nodes as the number of masking layers grows and the size of the features that need to be aligned continue to shrink. Both ASML and KLA-Tencor recently introduced new [getkc id="307" kc_name="overlay"] metrology systems, seeking to address the increasing precision required for lines, cuts and other features on each layer. At 10/... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Packaging and test A*STAR’s Institute of Microelectronics (IME) has formed a fan-out wafer-level packaging consortium comprising of OSATs, materials vendors, equipment suppliers and others. The group is called the FOWLP Development Line Consortium. As part of the announcement, Singapore’s IME has established a development line to accelerate the development of fan-out. Located in IME’s... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers At this week’s International Wafer-Level Packaging Conference (IWLPC), Samsung disclosed details about its efforts in the panel-level fan-out market. Samsung as well as ASE, Nepes and others are developing a next-generation fan-out technology using a panel-level format. In panel-level fan-out packaging, you can put more die on a panel as compared to a traditional round wafer, w... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 25


Mentor's Joe Hupcey III explains the benefits of prioritizing faults with formal analysis before launching detailed fault verification. Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in as AMD's Mark Papermaster discusses what's needed to keep driving Moore's Law. Synopsys' Jesse Victors takes a look at ROCA, the latest flaw affecting RSA cryptography, and argues it may be time for a new encryption sche... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 24


Redefining unit measurements At a recent meeting, the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) took the next step towards the expected redefinition of four base units within the International System of Units (SI). The SI base units include the following metrics or constants--meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and the candela. Here’s the fundamental constant... » read more

Exploring New Scaling Approaches


At the recent SPIE Photomask Technology + Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography 2017 conference, Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss semiconductor technology with Tsu-Jae King Liu, the TSMC Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. More specifically, Liu discussed some of the new... » read more

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