5 Steps To Data-Driven Manufacturing


There is a lot of hype surrounding “Industry 4.0,” “Smart Manufacturing,” “the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT),” and other associated terms, but it all boils down to one question: How do I become a data-driven manufacturer? Companies strive to be data driven, realizing that decisions will be more objective and more likely to achieve the desired results. In fact, many compani... » read more

Paving The Way To Autonomous Driving


Over the past couple weeks, four major carmakers began pairing off to jointly develop autonomous vehicles. Numerous reports say Ford will sign a deal with Volkswagen, and BMW is working on Level 4 self-driving vehicles with Daimler, the parent of Mercedes Benz. While this speaks volumes about the enormous cost of developing artificial intelligence systems to drive vehicles, it also points th... » read more

Advanced Process Control


David Fried, vice president of computational products at Lam Research, looks at shrinking tolerances at advanced processes, how that affects variation in semiconductor manufacturing, and what can be done to achieve the benefits of scaling without moving to new transistor architectures. » read more

Test Moving Forward And Backward


Test, once considered an important but rather mundane way of separating good chips from the not-so-good and the total rejects, is taking on a whole new life. After decades of largely living in the shadows behind design and advancements in materials and lithography, test has quietly shifted into a much more critical and more public role. But it has taken several rather significant shifts acro... » read more

Best Practices For Saving Measurement Data


You collect data to make decisions. However, an inefficient file format may cause problems when analyzing your data. The key to choosing a file format for your application involves thinking about the current system requirements and how the file can adapt for future application needs. To help you organize your file format for your application, use the guide and checklist of questions: • Ho... » read more

The Precision Knob


Precision used to be a goal, but increasingly it is being used as a tool. This is true for processing and algorithms, where less precision can greatly improve both performance and battery life. And it is true in manufacturing, where more precision can help minimize the growing impact of variation. Moreover, being able to dial precision up or down can help engineers see the impact on a system... » read more

New Approaches To Security


Different approaches are emerging to identify suspicious behavior and shut down potential breaches before they have a chance to do serious damage. This is becoming particularly important in markets where safety is an issue, and in AI and edge devices where the rapid movement of data is essential. These methods are a significant departure from the traditional way of securing devices through l... » read more

New Battleground In The Data Race


For the past couple years, giant commercial data centers have been grabbing as much data as possible. The big question now is whether that investment will pay off. Companies such as AWS, Google, Microsoft, Alibaba and Baidu are not necessarily the best equipped to leverage that data—or at least not yet. In fact, most of what they've been focusing on is a narrow slice of the data being coll... » read more

Crisis In Data


The push toward data-driven design, debug, manufacturing and reliability holds huge promise, but the big risk is none of this will happen in an organized fashion and everyone will be frustrated. One of the clear messages coming out of DVCon this week is that standards need to be established for data. Even within large chipmakers and systems companies, the data they extract from tools is not ... » read more

The Mighty Sensor In The Fab


The days of scheduled maintenance on fab equipment are coming to an end. In fact, the entire service model as we know it is about to undergo a mammoth change. The addition of more sensors into manufacturing equipment may seem like an evolutionary step, but the impact is going to be much more significant than it might appear. Rather than just alerting fab managers or equipment makers when a p... » read more

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