New Trends In Wafer Bonding


Unable to scale horizontally, due to a combination of lithography delays and power constraints, manufacturers are stacking devices vertically. This has become essential as the proliferation of mobile devices drives demand for smaller circuit footprints, but the transition isn't always straightforward. Three-dimensional integration schemes take many forms, depending on the required interconne... » read more

Planning For Panel-Level Fan-out


Several companies are developing or ramping up panel-level fan-out packaging as a way to reduce the cost of advanced packaging. Wafer-level fan-out is one of several advanced packaging types where a package can incorporate dies, MEMS and passives in an IC package. This approach has been in production for years, and is produced in a round wafer format in 200mm or 300mm wafer sizes. Fan-out... » read more

Test In New Frontiers: Flexible Circuits


Test is becoming increasingly complicated as new technologies such as flexible electronics begin playing mission-critical roles in applications where electronics have little or no history. Although flexible circuitry has been around for while, testing needs to catch up as these circuits are deployed across a variety of markets where conditions may be extreme. In many cases, sensors for monit... » read more

Making Random Variation Less Random


The economics for random variation are changing, particularly at advanced nodes and in complex packaging schemes. Random variation always will exist in semiconductor manufacturing processes, but much of what is called random has a traceable root cause. The reason it is classified as random is that it is expensive to track down all of the various quirks in a complex manufacturing process or i... » read more

Printed Sensor Market Expands


The growing use of actionable information in new ways to make better decisions is driving brisk growth in printed electronics (PE) and sensors. According to BCC Research, the global market for sensors should grow from $173.4 billion in 2019 to reach $323.3 billion by 2024 – a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.3%. Where will this growth come from? Where are the immediate, and longer-... » read more

What’s The Best Advanced Packaging Option?


As traditional chip designs become more unwieldy and expensive at each node, many IC vendors are exploring or pursuing alternative approaches using advanced packaging. The problem is there are too many advanced packaging options on the table already, and the list continues to grow. Moreover, each option has several tradeoffs and challenges, and all of them are still relatively expensive. ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools A consortium of 31 companies have launched a new project, called the “Advanced packaging for photonics, optics and electronics for low cost manufacturing in Europe.” The program is referred to as APPLAUSE. With a budget of 34 million euros, the project is being coordinated by ICOS, a division of KLA. “APPLAUSE will focus on advanced optics, photonics and electronics packagin... » read more

How Hardware Can Bias AI Data


Clean data is essential to good results in AI and machine learning, but data can become biased and less accurate at multiple stages in its lifetime—from moment it is generated all the way through to when it is processed—and it can happen in ways that are not always obvious and often difficult to discern. Blatant data corruption produces erroneous results that are relatively easy to ident... » read more

Test On New Technology’s Frontiers


Semiconductor testing is getting more complicated, more time-consuming, and increasingly it requires new approaches that have not been fully proven because the technologies they are addressing are so new. Several significant shifts are underway that make achieving full test coverage much more difficult and confidence in the outcome less certain. Among them: Devices are more connected an... » read more

Advanced Packaging Options Increase


Designing, integrating and assembling heterogeneous packages from blocks developed at any process node or cost point is proving to be far more difficult than expected, particularly where high performance is one of the main criteria. At least part of the problem is there is a spectrum of choices, which makes it hard to achieve economies of scale. Even where there is momentum for a particular ... » read more

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