New End Markets, More Demand For Complex Chips


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss economic conditions and how that affects chip design with Anirudh Devgan, president and CEO of Cadence; Joseph Sawicki, executive vice president of Siemens EDA; Niels Faché, vice president and general manager at Keysight; Simon Segars, advisor at Arm; and Aki Fujimura, chairman and CEO of D2S. This discussion was held in front... » read more

CEO Outlook: Chip Industry 2022


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss broad industry changes and how that affects chip design with Anirudh Devgan, president and CEO of Cadence; Joseph Sawicki, executive vice president of Siemens EDA; Niels Faché, vice president and general manager at Keysight; Simon Segars, advisor at Arm; and Aki Fujimura, chairman and CEO of D2S. This discussion was held in front of a live audience... » read more

Using GPUs In Semiconductor Manufacturing


Massive simulation and curvilinear shapes are forcing the photomask industry to rethink what types of chips work best. Aki Fujimura, CEO of D2S, talks about what happens when shapes printed on a mask are closer to what actually gets printed, how GPUs can be used to accelerate CPUs in single instruction/multiple data (SIMD) operations, and why pixel data is different from other data. » read more

Curvilinear Photomasks Can Be Made Today


Multi-beam mask writers (MBMWs) and GPU-accelerated curvilinear ILT are enabling curvilinear photomasks to be made today. Despite the benefits of improved process windows, curvilinear photomask adoption is slow. Industry luminaries surveyed by the eBeam Initiative in 2021 ranked photomask inspection and infrastructure as the top barriers to adoption, as shown in figure 1. Yet only 4% say the b... » read more

Photomask Shortages Grow At Mature Nodes


A surge in demand for chips at mature nodes, coupled with aging photomask-making equipment at those geometries, are causing significant concern across the supply chain. These issues began to surface only recently, but they are particularly worrisome for photomasks, which are critical for chip production. Manufacturing capacity is especially tight for photomasks at 28nm and above, driving up ... » read more

Strategies For Faster Yield Ramps On 5nm Chips


Leading chipmakers TSMC and Samsung are producing 5nm devices in high volume production and TSMC is forging ahead with plans for first 3nm silicon by year end. But to meet such aggressive targets, engineers must identify defects and ramp yield faster than before. Getting a handle on EUV stochastic defects — non-repeating patterning defects such as microbridges, broken lines, or missing con... » read more

Chiplets Enter The Supercomputer Race


Several entities from various nations are racing each other to deliver and deploy chiplet-based exascale supercomputers, a new class of systems that are 1,000x faster than today’s supercomputers. The latest exascale supercomputer CPU and GPU designs mix and match complex dies in advanced packages, adding a new level of flexibility and customization for supercomputers. For years, various na... » read more

Survey: 2022 Deep Learning Applications


The 2022 member list of deep learning projects and products that eBeam members are working on in photomask to wafer semiconductor manufacturing. Participating companies include Advantest, ASML, Canon, CEA-LETI, D2S, Fraunhofer IPMS, Hitachi High-Tech Corporation, imec, NuFlare Technology, Siemens Industries Software, Inc.; Siemens EDA, STMicroelectronics, and TASMIT. Click here to see the su... » read more

Transistors Reach Tipping Point At 3nm


The semiconductor industry is making its first major change in a new transistor type in more than a decade, moving toward a next-generation structure called gate-all-around (GAA) FETs. Although GAA transistors have yet to ship, many industry experts are wondering how long this technology will deliver — and what new architecture will take over from there. Barring major delays, today’s GAA... » read more

The Right Project Is Key For Photomask Adoption Of Deep Learning


Deep learning (DL) has become an integral part of the success of many companies. There have been many papers and some reported successes in semiconductor manufacturing, yet only 22% of the luminaries participating in the 2021 eBeam Initiative Luminaries survey see DL as a competitive advantage for photomask making by next year, as shown in figure 1. Looking at that chart, the luminaries believe... » read more

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