CT Scanning Baseballs


Climate change, manufacturing tolerances or design changes? What caused so many more home runs in professional baseball this year? CyberOptics will not be able to help you learn how climate change affected the home run statistics this year, but utilizing 3D industrial CT scanning could help identify changes in baseball design and manufacturing which may have contributed to a record spike in hom... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools It’s been a tough period for memory. But is there now a sign of a rebound? For the September 2019 quarter, Lam Research reported revenue of $2.166 billion, and net income was $466 million, or $3.09 per diluted share on a U.S. GAAP basis. The outlook at Lam (LRCX) is a bright spot. “LRCX posted strong results and guidance, noting strength from logic and foundry in the December ... » 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

Reducing Costly Flaws In Heterogeneous Designs


The cost of defects is rising as chipmakers begin adding multiple chips into a package, or multiple processor cores and memories on the same die. Put simply, one bad wire can spoil an entire system. Two main issues need to be solved to reduce the number of defects. The first is identifying the actual defect, which becomes more difficult as chips grow larger and more complex, and whenever chi... » read more

Testing Against Changing Standards In Automotive


The infusion of more semiconductor content into cars is raising the bar on reliability and changing the way chips are designed, verified and tested, but it also is raising a lot of questions about whether companies are on the right track at any point in time. Concerns about liability are rampant with autonomous and assisted driving, so standards are being rolled out well in advance of the te... » read more

The Race To Next-Gen 2.5D/3D Packages


Several companies are racing each other to develop a new class of 2.5D and 3D packages based on various next-generation interconnect technologies. Intel, TSMC and others are exploring or developing future packages based on one emerging interconnect scheme, called copper-to-copper hybrid bonding. This technology provides a way to stack advanced dies using copper connections at the chip level,... » 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

Autonomous Vehicles Are Reshaping The Tech World


The effort to build cars that can drive themselves is reshaping the automotive industry and its supply chain, impacting everything from who defines safety to how to ensure quality and reliability. Automakers, which hardly knew the names of their silicon suppliers a couple of years ago, are now banding together in small groups to share the costs and solve technical challenges that are well be... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


AI chip boom or bust? The semiconductor industry is the most bullish about adopting artificial intelligence (AI), according to a new report from Accenture. Some 77% of semiconductor executives surveyed said they have adopted AI within their businesses or are piloting the technology. In addition, 63% of semiconductor executives expect that AI will have the greatest impact on their business over... » read more

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