Beyond 5nm: Review of Buried Power Rails & Back-Side Power


A new technical paper titled "A Holistic Evaluation of Buried Power Rails and Back-Side Power for Sub-5 nm Technology Nodes" is presented by researchers at UT Austin, Arm Research, and imec. Find the technical paper here. Published July 2022. S. S. T. Nibhanupudi et al., "A Holistic Evaluation of Buried Power Rails and Back-Side Power for Sub-5 nm Technology Nodes," in IEEE Transactions... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 26


GaN finFETs, scaling GaN At the upcoming IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, a slew of entities will present papers on the latest technologies in R&D. The event, to be held Dec. 11–15, involve papers on advanced packaging, CMOS image sensors, interconnects, transistors, power devices and other technologies. At IEDM, Intel will present a paper on a GaN-... » read more

Inside Intel’s Ambitious Roadmap


Ann Kelleher, senior vice president and general manager of Technology Development at Intel, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the company’s new logic roadmap, as well as lithography, packaging, and process technology. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: Intel recently disclosed its new logic roadmap. Beyond Intel 3, the company is working on Intel 20A. Wit... » read more

Big Changes In Tiny Interconnects


One of the fundamental components of a semiconductor, the interconnect, is undergoing radical changes as chips scale below 7nm. Some of the most pronounced shifts are occurring at the lowest metal layers. As more and smaller transistors are packed onto a die, and as more data is processed and moved both on and off a chip or across a package, the materials used to make those interconnects, th... » read more