Vast Universe Of Transistors, Worm-Bot Innovation, Glass-Based Processor Enhancement, And Atomically Efficient Chips


What’s a sextillion? It’s the number one followed by 21 zeros — outnumbering the stars in the Milky Way. Industry analyst Jim Handy estimates that 13 sextillion transistors have been manufactured by the chip industry since the first one sprang to life in late 1947. Today, as modern graphics and artificial intelligence chips each contain billions of transistors, and the total continues t... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan Renesas will acquire Transphorm, which designs and manufactures gallium nitride power devices, for about $339 million. GaN, which is a wide-bandgap technology, is used for high-voltage applications in a slew of markets, including EVs and EV fast chargers, as well as data centers and industrial applications. Cadence acquired Invecas, a provider o... » read more

Glass Substrates Gain Foothold In Advanced Packages


Glass substrates are starting to gain traction in advanced packages, fueled by the potential for denser routing and higher signal performance than the organic substrates used today. There are still plenty of problems to solve before this approach becomes mainstream. While glass itself is cheap and shares some important physical similarities to silicon, there are challenges with buildup, stre... » read more

The Glass Substrate Question: When Will It Replace Copper Clad Laminate?


"When will glass replace copper clad laminate on advanced IC substrates?" That’s a question many on the heterogeneous integration (HI) side of the semiconductor industry are asking. Unfortunately, the answer is not straightforward. But before we get to answering that, let’s take an advanced IC substrate (AICS) refresher. In other words, how did we get to the point where glass substrat... » read more

PCB And IC Technologies Meet In The Middle


Surface-mount technology (SMT) is evolving far beyond its roots as a way of assembling packaged chips onto printed circuit boards without through-holes. It is now moving inside packages that will themselves be mounted on PCBs. But SMT for advanced packages isn’t the same as the SMT we’ve been used to. “Many systems include multiple ASICs, a lot of memory, and that's all integrated i... » read more

Focus Shifting From 2.5D To Fan-Outs For Lower Cost


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced packaging with Calvin Cheung, vice president of engineering at ASE; Walter Ng, vice president of business management at UMC; Ajay Lalwani, vice president of global manufacturing operations at eSilicon; Vic Kulkarni, vice president and chief strategist in the office of the CTO at ANSYS; and Tien Shiah, senior manager for memory at Samsung. W... » read more

Non-Traditional Chips Gaining Steam


Flexible hybrid electronics are beginning to roll out in the form of medical devices, wearable electronics and even near-field communications tags in retail, setting the stage for a whole new wave of circuit design, manufacturing and packaging that reaches well beyond traditional chips. FHE devices begin with substrates made of ceramics, glass, plastic, polyimide, polymers, polysilicon, stai... » read more