High-Speed Test IO: Addressing High-Performance Data Transmission And Testing Needs For HPC & AI


By Lakshmi Jain and Wei-Yu Ma The AI and HPC industries are rapidly shifting toward chiplet-based designs to achieve unprecedented levels of performance, as traditional monolithic system-on-chip (SoC) architectures face scaling limitations. This transition is fueled by the rise of heterogeneous integration, which is driving innovation across the semiconductor sector. However, this advancemen... » read more

Development Flows For Chiplets


Chiplets offer a huge leap in semiconductor functionality and productivity, just like soft IP did 40 years ago, but a lot has to come together before that becomes reality. It takes an ecosystem, which is currently very rudimentary. Today, many companies have hit the reticle limit and are forced to move to multi-die solutions, but that does not create a plug-and-play chiplet market. These ear... » read more

AI For Test: The New Frontier


Dr. Ming Zhang, PDF Solutions vice president of Fabless Solutions, delivered the keynote at the TestConX 2025 conference in March. As he began his presentation, Ming borrowed the “learn, explore and share” line from Ira Feldman, the organizer of the conference, to set the tone of his talk. He promised to share what he and PDF Solutions learned and what’s useful and what’s not useful as ... » read more

Coaxial Test Sockets Are In The Critical Path Of Advanced AI/CPU Products


Advanced AI/CPU processors demand extreme high frequency and power performance from SLT and ATE test sockets. These sockets are in the critical path at the end of a very costly silicon fabrication and advanced packaging manufacturing process. Yield loss at this point in the process is catastrophic to the bottom line. We at Modus Test, working in conjunction with our customers, have seen first-h... » read more

Overview Of Printed And Flexible Electronics: Technology Fundamentals, Design And Practical Applications


A new technical paper titled "Computing with Printed and Flexible Electronics" was published by researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Pragmatic Semiconductor Ltd and University of Patras. Abstract "Printed and flexible electronics (PFE) have emerged as the ubiquitous solution for application domains at the extreme edge, where the demands for low manufacturing and operational cos... » read more

Nearly Invisible: Defect Detection Below 5nm


Detecting sub-5nm defects creates huge challenges for chipmakers, challenges that have a direct impact on yield, reliability, and profitability. In addition to being smaller and harder to detect, defects are often hidden beneath intricate device structures and packaging schemes. Moreover, traditional optical and electrical probing methods, trusted for decades, are proving inadequate against ... » read more

Unlocking The Value Of Yield


Have you stopped to consider the impact of yield on your overall product cost? Of course you did, when you considered your yield targets and set your product goals. But is it good enough to stop once the goals are achieved, or should you find ways to drive additional value into your organization once production has begun? What is the value of a 1% improvement in product yield? The short answer ... » read more

Silicon Photonics Raises New Test Challenges


Semiconductor devices continuously experience advancements leading to technology and innovation leaps, such as we see today for applications in AI high-performance computing for data centers, edge AI devices, electric vehicles, autonomous driving, mobile phones, and others. Recent technology innovations include Angstrom-scale semiconductor processing nodes, high-bandwidth memory, advanced 2.5D/... » read more

AI Semiconductors Require An Integrated Test Solution


The rapid proliferation of generative pre-trained transformers based on large language models (LLMs) is driving growth in the market for chips that can run the LLMs and other artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications. Several types of chips hold promise for accelerating AI computing. Graphical processing units (GPUs) have proven to be capable solutions for the server/c... » read more

Failure To Launch


Failure analysis (FA) is an essential step for achieving sufficient yield in semiconductor manufacturing, but it’s struggling to keep pace with smaller dimensions, advanced packaging, and new power delivery architectures. All of these developments make defects harder to find and more expensive to fix, which impacts the reliability of chips and systems. Traditional failure analysis techniqu... » read more

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