What’s Different About Next-Gen Transistors

By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Oct, 2022 - Comments: 0

After nearly a decade and five major nodes, along with a slew of half-nodes, the semiconductor manufacturing industry will begin transitioning from finFETs to gate-all-around stacked nanosheet transistor architectures at the 3nm technology node. Relative to finFETs, nanosheet transistors deliver more drive current by increasing channel widths in the same circuit footprint. The gate-all-aroun... » read more

Highly Selective Etch Rolls Out For Next-Gen Chips

By Mark LaPedus - 21 Mar, 2022 - Comments: 0

Several etch vendors are starting to ship next-generation selective etch tools, paving the way for new memory and logic devices. Applied Materials was the first vendor to ship a next-gen selective etch system, sometimes called highly-selective etch, in 2016. Now, Lam Research, TEL, and others are shipping tools with highly-selective etch capabilities, in preparation for futuristic devices su... » read more

Chillers: A Cooling Product But Temperatures Still Rising

By John West - 16 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

In what has been an incredible ride over the past five years for everyone in the semiconductor supply chain, suppliers of chillers have shined as standout performers. These cooling systems that are stuck in the sub-fab space under the clean rooms get little attention, yet revenues have more than doubled in the past five years, clocking a compound annual growth rate of 22% to reach $635 million ... » read more

Expanded Material Metrology For Refined Etch Selectivities

By Anoop Somanchi - 08 Jun, 2021 - Comments: 0

Trends in advanced device fabrication require combined lithography-etching multi-patterning sequences and self-aligned multi-patterning to form devices’ finest features at subwavelength dimensions. As EUV lithography (13.5 nm) progresses to larger numerical apertures and new thin resists, new multipatterning sequences must be developed with mutually compatible resists and proximal layers t... » read more

Accelerating Dry Etch Processes During Feature Dependent Etch

By Timothy Yang - 23 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

In dry etching, the trajectory of accelerated ions is non-uniform and non-vertical, due to collisions with gas molecules and other random thermal effects (figure 1). This has an impact on etch results, since the etch rate at any point on the wafer will vary depending on the solid angle visible to the bulk chamber and the ion flux for that angular range. These non-uniform and feature dependent e... » read more

5/3nm Wars Begin

By Mark LaPedus - 23 Jan, 2020 - Comments: 6

Several foundries are ramping up their new 5nm processes in the market, but now customers must decide whether to design their next chips around the current transistor type or move to a different one at 3nm and beyond. The decision involves the move to extend today’s finFETs to 3nm, or to implement a new technology called gate-all-around FETs (GAA FETs) at 3nm or 2nm. An evolutionary step f... » read more

Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

NAND Flash Targets 1,000 Layers

New techniques go beyond improved deposition and etching, but challenges stack up, too.

by Bryon Moyer

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.