Building Smarter, Better Fabs

By Laura Peters - 15 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Battling labor shortages, faster ramp rates, and data overload, the process of designing and building greenfield fabs requires a combination of tech tools, failing earlier approaches and superior planning from day one. The complexity and scale of semiconductor fabs is skyrocketing as is the capital cost. Chipmakers are looking to ramp multibillion dollar fabs faster despite the hurdles of la... » read more

Using ML For Improved Fab Scheduling

By Katherine Derbyshire - 25 Jul, 2023 - Comments: 0

Expanding fab capacity is slow and expensive even under ideal circumstances. It has been still more difficult in recent years, as pandemic-related shortages have strained equipment supply chains. When integrated circuit demand rises faster than expansions can fill the gap, fabs try to find “hidden” capacity through improved operations. They hope that more efficient workflows will allow e... » read more

Goals of Going Green

By Anne Meixner - 25 Jul, 2023 - Comments: 0

The chip industry is stepping up efforts to be seen as environmentally friendly, driven by growing pressure from customers and government regulations. Some manufacturers have been addressing sustainability challenges for more than a decade, but they are becoming more aggressive in their efforts, while others are joining them. A review of sustainability reports across the semiconductor indust... » read more

Multi-Beam Writers Are Driving EUV Mask Development

By Jan Hendrik Peters - 25 Jul, 2023 - Comments: 1

By Jan Hendrik Peters (bmbg consult) and Ines Stolberg (Vistec Electron Beam) The European Mask and Lithography Conference (EMLC) 2023, held in Dresden this past June, was attended by about 180 people and over 60 talks and posters were presented. With several keynote and invited talks over two and a half days, the conference gave an overview of the semiconductor and technology landscape in E... » read more

Using Advanced Analytics To Meet ESG Goals

By Mike McIntyre - 06 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

With the continued advancement of environmental, social and governance goals, corporations are increasingly focused on reducing their carbon footprints. To accomplish this, these companies are being asked to operate their businesses more efficiently than ever before, whether the matter is reducing waste, water usage or power consumption. This is true for the semiconductor industry as well. A... » read more

Smarter Ways To Manufacture Chips

By Anne Meixner - 20 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

OSAT and wafer fabs are beginning to invest in Industry 4.0 solutions in order to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs, but it's a complicated process that involves setting up frameworks to evaluate different options and goals. Semiconductor manufacturing facilities have relied on dedicated automation teams for decades. These teams track and schedule chip production, respond to equi... » read more

Slowdown, But No Correction

By Ed Sperling - 06 Apr, 2022 - Comments: 1

The market for chips will continue to grow over the next few years, but not as quickly as over the past couple years when the work-at-home market drove up demand for everything from laptops and TVs to home video equipment. Economists painted a mixed picture for the semiconductor industry at this week's SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium, projecting continue growth in all major markets, but tem... » read more

2022 Chip Forecast: Mixed Signals

By Mark LaPedus - 22 Feb, 2022 - Comments: 0

Jim Feldhan, president of Semico Research, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the outlook for the semiconductor market. SE: What was your final 2021 semiconductor forecast? What is your 2022 semiconductor forecast? Feldhan: For 2021, world semiconductor revenues totaled $558 billion and units totaled over 1.1 trillion units. In terms of growth rate, revenues increased 2... » read more

200mm Shortages May Persist For Years

By Mark LaPedus - 20 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 2

A surge in demand for chips at more mature process nodes is causing shortages for both 200mm foundry capacity and 200mm equipment, and it shows no signs of letting up. In fact, even with new capacity coming on line this year, shortages are likely to persist for years, driving up prices and forcing significant changes across the semiconductor supply chain. Shortages for both 200mm foundry cap... » read more

Reshoring Vital To The Future Of Chipmaking

By Ken Molitor - 18 Mar, 2021 - Comments: 0

Repatriating offshore manufacturing efforts to the United States – i.e., “reshoring” – is not a new concept. The Reshoring Initiative was founded in 2010, and the Reshoring Institute, founded in 2014, conducts annual surveys of global manufacturers regarding their reshoring plans. The institute’s 2019 survey found that, while a growing number of businesses were rethinking their global... » read more

← Older posts

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

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

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

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

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?