Building Faster Chips


By Ed Sperling and Jeff Dorsch An explosion in IoT sensor data, the onset of deep learning and AI, and the commercial rollout of augmented and virtual reality are driving a renewed interest in performance as the key metric for semiconductor design. Throughout the past decade in which mobility/smartphone dominated chip design, power replaced performance as the top driver. Processors ha... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab and test equipment The wafer inspection market is heating up. For example, Applied Materials announced its new e-beam inspection system for use in foundry, logic, DRAM and 3D NAND applications. In addition, KLA-Tencor introduced six wafer defect inspection and review systems for leading-edge IC device manufacturing. National Instruments has rolled out a second-generation vector sig... » read more

E-beam Vs. Optical Inspection


The wafer inspection business is heating up as chipmakers encounter new and tiny killer defects in advanced devices. Last month ASML Holding entered into an agreement to acquire Hermes Microvision (HMI), the world’s largest e-beam inspection vendor, for $3.1 billion. The proposed move propelled ASML into the e-beam wafer inspection market. In addition, [getentity id="22817" e_name="Appl... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab materials/tools The Reference Project, a pan-European research program created to develop radio-frequency silicon-on-insulator (RF-SOI) technology, was recently launched at the Bernin, France-based facilities of Soitec. Soitec is the project leader in the group, which has an eligible budget of 33 million euros. The project will focus on developing technologies for 4G+ communications usi... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools Applied Materials has officially rolled out the Producer Selectra system, a selective etch tool. The system falls under the loosely defined category called atomic layer etch (ALE). Applied’s technology addresses a number of challenges. Today’s advanced chips have complex structures. They may also have deep and narrow trenches. One of the challenges is the inability of wet ... » read more

Data Analytics To Drive IC Shift


The adoption of predictive analytics has the potential to drive the next round of IC industry innovation and growth. Much of the necessary data handling technology is now available from other sectors. However, to fully capitalize on the possibilities, the IC manufacturing world faces particular challenges in figuring out how to get a high yield of actionable information from its streams of vari... » read more

Interconnect Challenges Rising


Chipmakers are ramping up their 14nm finFET processes, with 10nm and 7nm slated to ship possibly later this year or next. At 10nm and beyond, IC vendors are determined to scale the two main parts of the [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFET"] structure—the transistor and interconnects. Generally, transistor scaling will remain challenging at advanced nodes. And on top of that, the interconnects ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Manufacturing United States President Barack Obama has announced the winner of the New Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute and manufacturing hub competition. The winner is the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC). This coalition, headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif., brings together a consortium of nearly 200 partners from across academia, industry and non-profits. The idea is... » read more

The Road To 5nm


There is strong likelihood that enough companies will move to 7nm to warrant the investment. How many will move forward to 5nm is far less certain. Part of the reason for this uncertainty is big-company consolidation. There are simply fewer customers left who can afford to build chips at the most advanced nodes. Intel bought Altera. Avago bought Broadcom. NXP bought Freescale. GlobalFoundrie... » read more

Next Challenge: Contact Resistance


In chip scaling, there is no shortage of challenges. Scaling the finFET transistor and the interconnects are the biggest challenges for current and future devices. But now, there is another part of the device that’s becoming an issue—the contact. Typically, the contact doesn’t get that much attention, but the industry is beginning to worry about the resistance in the contacts, or conta... » read more

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