Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


President Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 15, limiting foreign investments in U.S. technology by "competitor or adversarial nations" that are deemed a threat to national security. In the past, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) largely limited its actions to the sale of U.S. companies. The new directive expands that to include investments involving "U.S. s... » read more

Making 5G More Reliable


The rollout of 5G is a complex and monumental effort involving multiple separate systems that need to function flawlessly together in real-time, making it difficult to determine where problems might arise, or how and when to test for them. Investments in 5G have been underway for the better part of a decade, and the technology is considered the next huge growth opportunity for mobile devices... » read more

Enabling Test Strategies For 2.5D, 3D Stacked ICs


Improved testability, coupled with more tests at more insertion points, are emerging as key strategies for creating reliable, heterogeneous 2.5D and 3D designs with sufficient yield.  Many changes need to fall into place to make side-by-side 2.5D and 3D stacking approaches cost-effective, particularly for companies looking to integrate chiplets from different vendors. Today, nearly all of t... » read more

The Drive Toward More Predictive Maintenance


Maintenance is a critical behind-the-scenes activity that keeps manufacturing facilities running and data centers humming. But when not performed in a timely manner, it can result in damaged products or equipment, or significant system/equipment downtime. By shifting from scheduled maintenance to predictive maintenance, factories and electronic system owners can reap substantial benefits, in... » read more

Open-Short Normalization Method For A Quick Defect Identification In Branched Traces With High-Resolution Time-Domain Reflectometry


Time-domain reflectometry (TDR) that employs electro-optical sampling affords excellent resolution at the femtosecond level and exhibits a comprehensible impulse waveform, thereby allowing quick defect identification in a single trace. However, it remains challenging to identify a defect in a trace of multiple branches; the TDR waveform is complex. Generally, the TDR waveform of a defective uni... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


The U.S. Commerce Department issued export controls on key technologies, including gallium oxide (Ga2O3) and diamond substrates, which are used at high voltages and temperatures, as well as EDA tools specifically developed for GAA FETs. It's not clear how this will impact EDA companies, because many of the tools that will be used for designing for GAA FETs already are in use today for finFETs. ... » read more

Making The Most Of Data Lakes


Having all the semiconductor data available is increasingly necessary for improving manufacturability, yield, and ultimately the reliability of end devices. But without sufficient knowledge of relationships between data from different processes and computationally efficient data structures, the value of any data is significantly reduced. In the semiconductor industry, reducing waste, decreas... » read more

GaN 8Gbps High-Speed Relay MMIC For Automated Test Equipment


An 8 Gbps high-speed relay MMIC for an Automated Test Equipment (ATE) using a gallium nitride is developed and evaluated. Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor structure with a tantalum oxynitride is employed to reduce a leakage current for ATE applications. The fabricated MMIC shows 0.3 nA of the leakage current, 12 GHz of a -3 dB bandwidth, and excellent eye-opening of 8 Gbps signals with a 18-lead... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


The U.S. Congress approved the CHIPS Act, a mammoth bipartisan achievement the New York Times called “the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades.” As passed, the full package — now called the Chips and Science Act — contains $52 billion in direct assistance for the semiconductor industry, along with $24 billion in tax incentives. In addition, the bill c... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, mobility Advantest installed its first enhanced T5851-STM16G tester of nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) solid-state drives (SSDs) using ball-grid arrays (BGAs) at a major manufacturer of IC memory devices. Anticipating the automotive market will be the largest consumer semiconductor ICs, Advantest designed the test machine to give system-level test coverage of NVMe BGA SSD devices... » read more

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