Correlation Study of Actual Temperature Profile and In-line Metrology Measurements for Within-Wafer Uniformity Improvement and Wafer Edge Yield Enhancement


Authors: Fang Fang (a), Alok Vaid (a), Alina Vinslava (a), Richard Casselberry (a), Shailendra Mishra (a), Dhairya Dixit (a), Padraig Timoney (a), Dinh Chu (b), Candice Porter (b), Da Song (b), Zhou Ren (b) Key: (a) GLOBALFOUNDRIES, 400 Stone Break Extension, Malta, NY 12020; (b) KLA-Tencor Corporation, One Technology Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035   ABSTRACT With advances in new techn... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 12


Mentor's Harry Foster checks out how much time and effort is spent on verification of FPGAs and points to the increasing demand for verification engineers. Cadence's Paul McLellan digs into IC Insights' year-end report to see how some of the top semiconductor companies stack up. Synopsys' Taylor Armerding warns that air gaps, a valuable barrier against cyberattacks, are disappearing from ... » read more

Packaging Biz Faces Challenges in 2019


The IC packaging industry is bracing for slower growth, if not uncertainty, in 2019, even though advanced packaging remains a bright spot in the market. Generally, IC packaging houses saw strong demand in the first part of 2018, but the market cooled in the second half of the year due to a slowdown in memory. Going forward, the slower IC packaging market is expected to extend into the first ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries has announced that its advanced silicon-germanium (SiGe) offering is available for prototyping on 300mm wafers. GF’s SiGe technology has been shipping on its 200mm production line in Burlington, Vt. The technology, a 90nm SiGe process, is moving to 300mm wafers at GF’s Fab 10 facility in East Fishkill, N.Y. The SiGe technology is called 9HP. “The increasing ... » read more

Getting Down To Business On Chiplets


Government agencies, industry groups and individual companies are beginning to rally around various chiplet models, setting the stage for complex chips that are quicker and cheaper to build using standardized interfaces and components. The idea of putting together different modules like LEGOs has been talked about for the better part of a decade. So far, only Marvell has used this concept co... » read more

Foundries Prepare For Battle At 22nm


After introducing new 22nm processes over the last year or two, foundries are gearing up the technology for production—and preparing for a showdown. GlobalFoundries, Intel, TSMC and UMC are developing and/or expanding their efforts at 22nm amid signs this node could generate substantial business for applications like automotive, IoT and wireless. But foundry customers face some tough choic... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Test There is more consolidation in the ATE business. In October, Cohu completed the acquisition of Xcerra, a supplier of ATE and other products. Then, Astronics this week entered into an agreement for the sale of the intellectual-property and certain assets associated with its semiconductor test business to Advantest for $185 million in cash. The sale additionally includes a $30 million earn-... » read more

Some Chipmakers Sidestep Scaling, Others Hedge


The rising cost of developing chips at 7nm coupled with the reduced benefits of scaling have pried open the floodgates for a variety of options involving new materials, architectures and packaging that either were ignored or not fully developed in the past. Some of these approaches are closely tied to new markets, such as assisted and autonomous vehicles, robotics and 5G. Others involve new ... » read more

Finding New Dimensions Of Innovation


Whenever a company announces a major strategy shift and restructuring, such as pivoting away from 7nm FinFET technology development, it’s understandable that confusion, uncertainty and misunderstandings may arise. The best way to allay these concerns is to take an objective look at the situation: Demand for chips for the automotive, IoT, mobility and data center/wireless infrastructure mar... » read more

Matching Between Simulations and Measurements As a Key Driver for Reliable Overlay Target Design


By S. Lozenko, B. Schulz, L. Fuerst, C. Hartig, and M. Ruhm of GlobalFoundries and T. Shapoval, G. Ben-Dov, Z. Lindenfeld,  R. Haupt, and R. Wang of KLA-Tencor Abstract Numerical simulation of overlay metrology targets has become a de-facto standard in advanced technology nodes. While appropriate simulation software is widely available in the industry alongside with metrics that allow sel... » read more

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