The Evolution Of EUV


EUV systems are beginning to ship to large foundries in volume, setting the stage for one of the biggest leaps in technology the semiconductor industry has ever witnessed. ASML has emerged as the sole supplier in this market, but it has taken an entire ecosystem to develop EUV. It has taken billions of dollars of investment by ASML, along with enormous cash infusions by Intel and TSMC, contr... » read more

The Hunt For A Low-Power PHY


Physics has been on the side of chipmakers throughout most of the lifetime of [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"], but when dealing with the world outside the chip, physics is working against them. Pushing data at ever-faster rates through boards and systems consumes increasing amounts of power, but the power budget for chips has not been increasing. Could chips be constrained by their int... » read more

Biz Talk: ASICs


eSilicon CEO [getperson id="11145" comment="Jack Harding"] talks about the future of scaling, advanced packaging, the next big things—automotive, deep learning and virtual reality—and the need for security. [youtube vid=leO8gABABqk]   Related Stories Executive Insight: Jack Harding (Aug 2016) eSilicon’s CEO looks at industry consolidation, competition, China’s impact, an... » read more

More Degrees Of Freedom


Ever since the publication of Gordon Moore's famous observation in 1965, the semiconductor industry has been laser-focused on shrinking devices to their practical, and more recently, impractical limit. Increasing transistor density has encountered a number of problems along the way, but it also has enabled us to put computers—which once filled specially built rooms—onto the desktop firs... » read more

Implementing Fan-Out Wafer-Level Packaging with Mentor Graphics


Fan-out wafer-level packaging (FOWLP) is a new high-density packaging technology that is rapidly gaining popularity. What is it? Who needs it? How do you take advantage of it? What limitations does it have? Learn all about FOWLP and our comprehensive tool integration and support for the design and verification of FOWLP products. To read more, click here. » read more

Betting On Wafer-Level Fan-Outs


Advanced packaging is starting to gain traction as a commercially viable business model rather than just one more possible option, propelled by the technical difficulties in routing signals at 10nm and 7nm and skyrocketing costs of device scaling on a single die. The inclusion of a [getkc id="202" kc_name="fan-out"] package for logic in Apple's iPhone 7, based on TSMC's Integrated Fan-Out (... » read more

What’s Next For Transistors


The IC industry is moving in several different directions at once. The largest chipmakers continue to march down process nodes with chip scaling, while others are moving towards various advanced packaging schemes. On top of that, post-CMOS devices, neuromorphic chips and quantum computing are all in the works. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these technologies with Marie Semeri... » read more

Transferring Skills Getting Harder


Rising complexity in developing chips at advanced nodes, and an almost perpetual barrage of new engineering challenges at each new node, are making it more difficult for everyone involved to maintain consistent skill levels across a growing number of interrelated technologies. The result is that engineers are being forced to specialize, but when they work with other engineers with different ... » read more

China Unveils Memory Plans


Backed by billions of dollars in government funding, China in 2014 launched a major initiative to advance its domestic semiconductor, IC-packaging and other electronic sectors. So far, though, the results are mixed. China is making progress in IC-packaging, but the nation’s efforts to advance its domestic logic and memory sectors are still a work in progress. In fact, China has yet to achi... » read more

What’s Missing In Advanced Packaging


Even though Moore's Law is running out of steam, there is still a need to increase functional density. Increasingly, this is being done with heterogeneous integration at the package or module level. This is proving harder than it looks. At this point there are no standardized methodologies, and tools often are retrofitted versions of existing tools that don't take into account the challenges... » read more

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