What Future Processors Will Look Like


Mark Papermaster, CTO at AMD, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about architectural changes that are required as the benefits of scaling decrease, including chiplets, new standards for heterogeneous integration, and different types of memory. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What does a processor look like in five years? Is it a bunch of chips in a package? I... » read more

Data Center Architectures In Flux


Data center architectures are becoming increasingly customized and heterogeneous, shifting from processors made by a single vendor to a mix of processors and accelerators made by multiple vendors — including system companies' own design teams. Hyperscaler data centers have been migrating toward increasingly heterogeneous architectures for the past half decade or so, spurred by the rising c... » read more

Unintended Coupling Issues Grow


The number of indirect and often unexpected ways in which one design element may be affected by another is growing, making it more difficult to ensure a chip — or multiple chips in a package — will perform reliably. Long gone are the days when the only way that one part of a circuit could influence another was by an intended wire connecting them. As geometries get smaller, frequencies go... » read more

RF To mmWave Design For Systems


RF-enabled next-generation communication systems and connected devices are differentiated by their performance, size, and cost. Traditionally, custom proprietary IC designs, leveraging the latest advanced-node technology, were developed to meet these product requirements. Increasingly these challenges are being met by moving beyond single IC solutions. Today’s electronic systems often integra... » read more

Thermal Management Implications For Heterogeneous Integrated Packaging


As the semiconductor industry reaches lower process nodes, silicon designers struggle to have Moore's Law produce the results achieved in earlier generations. Increasing the die size in a monolithic system on chip (SoC) designs is no longer economically viable. The breakdown of monolithic SoCs into specialized chips, referred to as chiplets, presents significant benefits in terms of cost, yield... » read more

Large-Field, Fine-Resolution Lithography Enables Next-Generation Panel-Level Packaging


The lithography challenge for large heterogeneous integration is the limited size of the exposure field (typically 60mm x 60mm or less) for most currently available lithography systems. Fine resolution and a large field size provide the user with the opportunity to increase the package size beyond 150mm x 150mm and maintain high throughput. This new capability has the potential to pave the ... » read more

Challenges With Stacking Memory On Logic


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the changes in design tools and methodologies needed for 3D-ICs, with Sooyong Kim, director and product specialist for 3D-IC at Ansys; Kenneth Larsen, product marketing director at Synopsys; Tony Mastroianni, advanced packaging solutions director at Siemens EDA; and Vinay Patwardhan, product management group director at Cadence... » read more

Next Steps For Panel-Level Packaging


Tanja Braun, group manager at Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM), sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about III-V device packaging, chiplets, fan-out and panel-level processing. Fraunhofer IZM recently announced a new phase of its panel-level packaging consortium. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: IC packaging isn’t new, but years a... » read more

Extremely Large Exposure Field With Fine Resolution Lithography Technology To Enable Next Generation Panel Level Advanced Packaging


The growing demand for heterogeneous integration is driven by the 5G market that includes smartphones, data centers, servers, HPC, AI and IoT applications. Next-generation packaging technologies require tighter overlay to accommodate a larger package size with finer pitch chip interconnects on large format flexible panels. Heterogeneous integration enables next-generation device performance ... » read more

More Than Moore At iMAPS


San Diego recently hosted the 54th International Symposium on Microelectronics. That's a very generic title, so you should know that it is run by iMAPS, the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society. Generally, the conference is just known as iMAPS. One of the keynotes was given by Cadence's KT Moore (in person). His presentation was titled "More Moore or More than Moore: a... » read more

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