Acoustic Metrology for Fine Pitch Microbumps in 3D IC


The continuing shift to 3D integration requires formation of electrical interconnects between multiple vertically stacked Si devices to enable high speed, high bandwidth connections. Microbumps and through silicon vias (TSVs) enable the high-density interconnects for die-to-die and die-to-wafer stacking for different applications. In this paper, we present acoustic metrology techniques for the ... » read more

Electro-Thermal Signoff For Next Gen 3DICs


Multi-die designs, 2.5D and 3D, have been rising in popularity as they offer tremendously increased levels of integration, a smaller footprint, performance gains and more. While they are attractive for many applications, they also create design bottlenecks in the areas of thermal management and power delivery. For 3DICs, in addition to the complex SoC/PCB interactions seen in their 2D counterpa... » read more

The Next Advanced Packages


Packaging houses are readying their next-generation advanced IC packages, paving the way toward new and innovative system-level chip designs. These packages include new versions of 2.5D/3D technologies, chiplets, fan-out and even wafer-scale packaging. A given package type may include several variations. For example, vendors are developing new fan-out packages using wafers and panels. One is... » read more

EDA Gears Up For 3D


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss changes required throughout the ecosystem to support three-dimensional (3D) chip design with Norman Chang, chief technologist for the Semiconductor Business Unit of ANSYS; John Park, product management director for IC packaging and cross-platform solutions at Cadence; John Ferguson, director of marketing for DRC applications at Mentor, a Siemens Bus... » read more

Design For Advanced Packaging


Advanced packaging techniques are viewed as either a replacement for Moore's Law scaling, or a way of augmenting it. But there is a big gap between the extensive work done to prove these devices can be manufactured with sufficient yield and the amount of attention being paid to the demands advanced packaging has on the design and verification flows. Not all advanced packaging places the same... » read more

Complexity, Reliability And Cost


Peter Schneider, director of Fraunhofer's Engineering of Adaptive Systems Division, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about future challenges in complexity, time to market and reliability issues, advanced packaging architectures, and the impact of billions of connected devices. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What is the biggest challenge you see in the semico... » read more

Blog Review: May 2


Arm's Greg Yeric looks towards the future of 3D ICs with a dive into transistor-level 3D, including the different proposed methods of stacking transistors, power/performance benefits, and challenges such as parasitic resistance. Mentor's Kurt Takara, Chris Kwok, Dominic Lucido, and Joe Hupcey III explain how a custom synchronizer methodology can help avoid CDC mistakes and errors in FPGA des... » read more

Blog Review: April 4


Synopsys' Richard Solomon explains PCIe's upstream and downstream component naming and why understanding the perspective is key. Mentor's Cristian Filip dives into frequency domain analysis for high data rate SerDes links and the movement toward a simpler way of channel characterization. Cadence's Paul McLellan takes a look at the history of the RISC processors and the death of microcode ... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 2


To celebrate ARM's 25th birthday, Neil Cooper teamed up with the Science Museum in London to feature 25 people or objects that were pivotal to the creation of modern technology. This week: James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz. Ansys' Bill Vandermark delves deep into the oceans with energy-storing balloons and up to the sky on a diamond thread in his top technology and engineering articles ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor Graphics rolled out a new platform for verification of unknown voltage levels (Xs) at the register transfer and gate levels, fusing together simulation and formal verification under one umbrella. The company says the approach will limit bugs and wasted effort caused by X-optimism and pessimism. Jasper Design Automation unveiled a new tool to verify the sequential functional equ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →