Experts At The Table: Yield Issues


By Ed Sperling Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss yield with Amiad Conley, technology marketing manager for yield and process control at Applied Materials; Cyrus Tabery, senior member of the GlobalFoundries technical staff for lithography development and DFM; Brady Benware, engineering manager for diagnosis and yield at Mentor Graphics, and Ankush Oberai, general man... » read more

The Growing Legacy Of Moore’s Law


By Ed Sperling Moore’s Law has defined semiconductor design since it was introduced in 1965, but increasingly it also has begun defining the manufacturing equipment, the cooling needed for end devices, and both the heat and performance of systems. In the equipment sector the big problem has been the delay in rolling out extreme ultraviolet (EUV). Moore’s Law will require tighter spacing... » read more

The Future Of 3D Stacking


By Ed Sperling Despite concerns about the lack of tools, an unstable process, questionable interconnects, thermal overloads and electrostatic discharge, 3D stacking appears to be making headway. At the very least, lots of companies of all sizes are betting heavily that it will succeed. The first wave, which is expected to start showing up late next year, will likely come from a handful of t... » read more

Extending Moore’s Law


By Ann Steffora Mutschler For Moore’s Law to perpetuate, the materials used in semiconductor manufacturing must do their part to allow the scaling of devices to occur. Some of the latest include a carbonless film deposition technology for 20nm transistors and smaller, a plastic memory device and a material compound of silicon, copper, nickel and iron that researchers believe could lower manu... » read more

The Shape Of Things To Come


By David Lammers Tall or thin? That is the question facing semiconductor companies, now reaching an “intense” phase in development of the vertical finFET and planar ETSOI (extra thin silicon on insulator) transistors for the 22/20nm and 15/14nm technology generations. “This is a conservative industry,” said Raj Jammy, vice president of materials and emerging technologies at Sematech... » read more

Preparing For 3D IC Stacking


By David Lammers Through-silicon vias (TSVs) are in various stages of late development, but design and manufacturing challenges remain before companies can gain the full benefits of the third dimension. Two camps are pushing hard to introduce TSVs—the design community and the manufacturing equipment companies. The initial goal is to connect graphics memories to graphics processors in mobi... » read more

Who’s Calling The Shots Now?


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Determining who makes the decisions in semiconductor industry is not as easy as it sounds. There is not a straight line of responsibility in today’s market due to changing industry dynamics such as the shift from the IDM business model to the foundry model. “If you go back far enough, everyone had to manufacture their own chips. There was a substantial influenc... » read more

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