Data Center Thermal Management Improves


Thermal issues are plaguing semiconductor design at every level, from chips developed with single-digit nanometer processes to 100,000-square-foot data centers. The underlying cause is too many devices or services that require increasing amounts of power, and too few opportunities for the resulting heat to dissipate. “Everybody wants to try to do more in a small volume of space,” said St... » read more

Digital Twins Find Their Footing In IC Manufacturing


Momentum is building for digital twins in semiconductor manufacturing, tying together the various processes and steps to improve efficiency and quality, and to enable more flexibility in the fab and assembly house. The movement toward digital twins opens up a slew of opportunities, from building and equipping new fabs faster to speeding yield ramps by reducing the number of silicon-based tes... » read more

Digital Twin And The Implications For Semiconductor Suppliers


Automotive is a prime example of one industry where advanced semiconductors are forcing change across all aspects of vehicle development. Accelerated investment is fueling this industry wide evolution, driven by new business models, environmental regulations, and the evolution toward fully autonomous, software-defined vehicles. The demand for fully and semi-autonomous systems has a particula... » read more

Thermal Challenges Multiply In Automotive, Embedded Devices


Embedding chips into stacked-die assemblies is creating thermal dissipation challenges that can reduce the reliability and lifespan of these devices, a growing problem as chipmakers begin cramming chiplets into advanced packages with thinner substrates between them. In the past, nearly all of these complex designs were used in tightly controlled environments, such as a large data center, whe... » read more

Verification Tools Straining To Keep Up


Verification engineers are the unsung heroes of the semiconductor industry, but they are at a breaking point and desperately in need of modern tools and flows to deal with the rapidly increasing pressures. Verification is no longer just about ensuring that functionality is faithfully represented in an implementation. That alone is an insolvable task, but verification has taken on many new re... » read more

Digital Twins Gaining Traction In Complex Designs


The integration of heterogeneous chiplets into an advanced package, coupled with the increasing digitalization of multiple industry segments, is pushing digital twins to the forefront of design. The challenge in these complex assemblies is figuring out the potential tradeoffs between different chiplets, different assembly approaches, and to be able to do it quickly enough to still hit market... » read more

IC Industry’s Growing Role In Sustainability


The massive power needs of AI systems are putting a spotlight on sustainability in the semiconductor ecosystem. The chip industry needs to be able to produce more efficient and lower-power semiconductors. But demands for increased processing speed are rising with the widespread use of large language models and the overall increase in the amount of data that needs to be processed. Gartner estima... » read more

Toward A Software-Defined Hardware World


Software-defined hardware may be the ultimate Shift Left approach as chip design grows closer to true co-design than ever with potential capacity baked into the hardware, and greater functionality delivered over the air or via a software update. This marks another advance in the quest for lower power, one that’s so revolutionary that it’s upending traditional ideas about model-based systems... » read more

Physics-Based Digital Twin of a Thermally Aged Flip-Chip Package (TU Delft, NXP)


A technical paper titled “Modelling thermomechanical degradation of moulded electronic packages using physics-based digital twin” was published by researchers at Delft University of Technology and NXP Semiconductors. Abstract: "Semiconductor devices are commonly encapsulated with Epoxy-based Moulding Compounds (EMC) to form an electronic package. EMC typically occupies a large volume with... » read more

Using Predictive Maintenance To Boost IC Manufacturing Efficiency


Predicting exactly how and when a process tool is going to fail is a complex task, but it's getting a tad easier with the rollout of smart sensors, standard interfaces, and advanced data analytics. The potential benefits of predictive maintenance are enormous. Higher tool uptime correlates with greater fab efficiency and lower operating costs, so engineers are pursuing multiple routes to boo... » read more

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