Chip Industry’s Technical Paper Roundup: Nov. 15


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=63 /] » read more

Using More Germanium In Chips for Energy Efficiency & Achievable Clock Frequencies


A new technical paper titled "Composition Dependent Electrical Transport in Si1−xGex Nanosheets with Monolithic Single-Elementary Al Contacts" was published by researchers at TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), Johannes Kepler University, CEA-LETI, and Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. Find the technical paper here. Published September 2022. Abstrac... » read more

Legacy Tools, New Tricks: Optical 3D Inspection


Stacking chips is making it far more difficult to find existing and latent defects, and to check for things like die shift, leftover particles from other processes, co-planarity of bumps, and adhesion of different materials such as dielectrics. There are several main problems: Not everything is visible from a single angle, particularly when vertical structures are used; Various struc... » read more

Hybrid Bonding Moves Into The Fast Lane


The industry’s unquenchable thirst for I/O density and faster connections between chips, particularly logic and cache memory, is transforming system designs to include 3D architectures, and hybrid bonding has become an essential component in that equation. Hybrid bonding involves die-to-wafer or wafer-to-wafer connection of copper pads that carry power and signals and the surrounding diele... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools, IP, design Infineon Technologies acquired NoBug, a provider of design verification services. The acquisition will help Infineon expand its IoT R&D business in eastern Europe. “This considerable increase in superior verification know-how lets Infineon offer its customers more of its leading products at a reduced time-to-market,” said Guenter Krasser, Vice President and Managing D... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Node scaling wars are revving up, although much of the action is happening where most people can't see it — inside of research labs. This is difficult stuff, which makes delivery dates difficult to pinpoint, and no one wants to give away their competitive position or commit to a timeline they can't keep. Billions of dollars of leading-edge research — funded by pure-play foundry TSMC, IDM... » read more

Week in Review: Manufacturing, Test


Hybrid Bonding & Supercomputers At this week’s ECTC conference, CEA-Leti and Intel presented an “optimized hybrid direct-bonding, self-assembly process," which they claim has the potential to increase alignment accuracy and speed up fab throughput by several thousand dies per hour. The approach uses capillary forces of a water droplet to align dies on a target wafer. “Commercial s... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


The U.S. Senate approved the 2022 America COMPETES act, which has big ramifications for the chip industry. The bill now heads to the House for further reconciliation. If approved, it would provide more than $50 billion in U.S. subsidies for semiconductor chip manufacturing. The SIAC (Semiconductor In America Coalition) urged Congress to act promptly to achieve a bipartisan compromise soon and o... » read more

Research Bits: March 29


Brain-like AI chip Researchers from Purdue University, Santa Clara University, Portland State University, Pennsylvania State University, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois Chicago, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and University of Georgia built a reprogrammable chip that could be used as the basis for brain-like AI hardware. “The brains of living beings can continuously l... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Design services firm SemiFive acquired Analog Bits, a provider of low-power mixed-signal IP. Analog Bits' portfolio includes precision clocking macros, I/Os, SerDes, and sensors to monitor PVT. It was founded in 1995 and based in Sunnyvale, California. “Analog Bits has a solid track record of developing and delivering differentiated and high-quality mixed signal IP addressing multiple market ... » read more

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