If These Chips Could Talk: Actionable Insights From Path Margin Monitors


One of the most important current trends in electronics is the gathering and analysis of big data to reap benefits in cost, power, performance, and reliability. This is becoming common in the chip development flow. For example, data harvested from simulation regressions can aid in debug and reaching coverage goals. Machine learning (ML) uses the results of many passes through implementation (lo... » read more

Finding And Applying Domain Expertise In IC Analytics


Behind PowerPoint slides depicting the data inputs and outputs of a data analytics platform belies the complexity, effort, and expertise that improve fab yield. With the tsunami of data collected for semiconductor devices, fabs need engineers with domain expertise to effectively manage the data and to correctly learn from the data. Naively analyzing a data set can lead to an uninteresting an... » read more

Extreme Ancestry: Silicon Edition


The ability to trace the genealogy of all the components in an electronic device has been getting more complex for decades. For many industries — automotive, defense, medical and others — the need to locate the source of a problem in near real-time is paramount to gauging the extent of that problem. The extreme case is when the issue occurs with a product that already has been distributed a... » read more

Big Payback For Combining Different Types Of Fab Data


Collecting and combining diverse data types from different manufacturing processes can play a significant role in improving semiconductor yield, quality, and reliability, but making that happen requires integrating deep domain expertise from various different process steps and sifting through huge volumes of data scattered across a global supply chain. The semiconductor manufacturing IC data... » read more

Strategies For Meeting Stringent Standards For Automotive ICs


It may surprise you, but when it comes to chips in electronic braking systems, airbag control units, and more, automotive manufacturers are still using 10-year-old technology — and with good reason. For the automotive industry, the reliability, stability, and robustness of electronic components are critical, especially when it comes to meeting the stringent Automotive Electronics Council (... » read more

One Test Is Not Always Enough


To improve yield, quality, and cost, two separate test parameters can be combined to determine if a part passes or fails. The results gleaned from that approach are more accurate, allowing test and quality engineers to fail parts sooner, detect more test escapes, and ultimately to improve yield and reduce manufacturing costs. New data analytic platforms, combined with better utilization of s... » read more

Making Test Transparent With Better Data


Data is critical for a variety of processes inside the fab. The challenge is getting enough consistent data from different equipment and then plugging it back into the design, manufacturing, and test flows to quickly improve the process and uncover hard-to-find defective die. Progress is being made. The inspection and test industry is on the cusp of having more dynamic ways to access the dat... » read more

Geo-Spatial Outlier Detection


Comparing die test results with other die on a wafer helps identify outliers, but combining that data with the exact location of an outlier offers a much deeper understanding of what can go wrong and why. The main idea in outlier detection is to find something in or on a die that is different from all the other dies on a wafer. Doing this in the context of a die’s neighbor has become easie... » read more

Reliability Costs Becoming Harder To Track


Ensuring reliability in chips is becoming more complex and significantly more expensive, shifting left into the design cycle and right into the field. But those costs also are becoming more difficult to define and track, varying greatly from one design to the next based upon process node, package technology, market segment, and which fab or OSAT is used. As the number of options increases fo... » read more

Chasing Test Escapes In IC Manufacturing


The number of bad chips that slip through testing and end up in the field can be significantly reduced before those devices ever leave the fab, but the cost of developing the necessary tests and analyzing the data has sharply limited adoption. Determining an acceptable test escape metric for an IC is essential to improving the yield-to-quality ratio in chip manufacturing, but what exactly is... » read more

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