The Week In Review: Design


Tools Synopsys unveiled its next-generation ATPG and diagnostics solution, TetraMAX II. According to the company, the tool is an order of magnitude faster than the previous generation, reducing runtime from days to hours, as well as generating 25% fewer patterns. The new tool is also certified for the ISO 26262 automotive functional safety standard. It has been deployed by STMicroelectronics... » 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

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

IMEC Partner Technical Week Review


In March 2016, Coventor was invited to the biannual Partner Technical Week (PTW) at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium. IMEC, a world-leading research group in nanotechnology, organizes their Partner Technical Week every six months to present scientific results to their partners. During this week, a number of specialists from IMEC's many partner companies also discuss their progress in areas related to IM... » read more

Pathfinding Beyond FinFETs


Though the industry will likely continue to find ways to extend CMOS finFET technology further than we thought possible, at some point in the not-so-distant future, making faster, lower power ICs will require more disruptive changes. For something that could be only five to seven years out, there’s a daunting range of contending technologies. Improvements through the process will help, from E... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


MEMS manufacturing A*STAR’s Institute of Microelectronics (IME) in Singapore has launched its third consortium to develop MEMS technologies. This would allow MEMS sensor devices to achieve better performance, higher power efficiency and a smaller form factor. The MEMS Consortium III consists of the following companies: Applied Materials, Coventor, Delta Electronics, GlobalFoundries, InvenS... » read more

What Happened To DSA?


Directed self-assembly (DSA) was until recently a rising star in the next-generation lithography (NGL) landscape, but the technology has recently lost some of its luster, if not its momentum. So what happened? Nearly five years ago, an obscure patterning technology called [gettech id="31046" t_name="DSA"] burst onto the scene and began to generate momentum in the industry. At about that t... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: May 17


Isolating diamondoids Stanford and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are finding new ways to isolate diamondoids. Diamondoids, which are tiny specks of diamond, are found in petroleum fluids. The smallest diamondoid consists of 10 atoms. A diamondoid weighs less than a billionth of a billionth of a carat. A carat is a unit of mass equal to 200 mg. [caption id="attachment_27544" ... » read more

Next EUV Challenge: Pellicles


Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is still not ready for high-volume manufacturing, but the technology is at least moving in the right direction. Both the [gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"] light source and resists are making noticeable progress, even though there are still challenges in the arena. And then, there is the EUV mask infrastructure, which also has some gaps. “When EUV i... » read more

Improving Transistor Reliability


One of the more important challenges in reliability testing and simulation is the duty cycle dependence of degradation mechanisms such as negative bias temperature instability ([getkc id="278" kc_name="NBTI"]) and hot carrier injection (HCI). For example, as previously discussed, both the shift due to NBTI and the recovery of baseline behavior are very dependent on device workload. This is ... » read more

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