Advanced Packaging Fundamentals for Semiconductor Engineers


Advanced packaging is inevitable. Large systems companies and processing vendors already are working with various types of highly engineered packaging. The rest of the semiconductor industry will follow at some point, whether they're designing their own packages, developing the tools, processes, materials, and methodologies to create them, or developing components that will be used inside of th... » read more

Big Changes Ahead For Interposers And Substrates


Interposers and substrates are undergoing a profound transformation from intermediaries to engineered platforms responsible for power distribution, thermal management, high-density interconnects, and signal integrity in the most advanced computing systems. This shift is being driven by AI, high-performance computing (HPC), and next-generation communications, where the need for heterogeneous ... » read more

AI And Semiconductor In Reciprocity


In today’s rapidly advancing technological era, AI has become a powerful catalyst for innovation and progress. Advanced semiconductor packaging plays a crucial role in supporting AI development, while AI applications create new semiconductor demands and drive the development of semiconductor technologies, with both complementing each other. Semiconductor packaging: The bridge between chip an... » read more

Assembly Design Rules Slowly Emerge


Process design kits (PDKs) play an essential in ensuring that silicon technology can proceed from one generation to the next in a manner that design tools can keep up with. No such infrastructure has been needed for packaging in the past, but that's beginning to change with advanced packages. Heterogeneous assemblies are still ramping up, but their benefits are attracting new designs. “Chi... » read more

Screening For Known Good Interposers


Ensuring the quality of silicon and organic interposers is becoming harder as the number of signals passing through them continues to grow, fueled by more chiplets, higher processing demands, and more layers of devices assembled in a package. Interposers initially were viewed as relatively simple conduits. That perception has changed rather dramatically in recent years with the growing focus... » read more

New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency


Leading AI systems designs are migrating away from building the fastest AI processor possible, adopting a more balanced approach that involves highly specialized, heterogeneous compute elements, faster data movement, and significantly lower power. Part of this shift revolves around the adoption of chiplets in 2.5D/3.5D packages, which enable greater customization for different workloads and ... » read more

3.5D: The Great Compromise


The semiconductor industry is converging on 3.5D as the next best option in advanced packaging, a hybrid approach that includes stacking logic chiplets and bonding them separately to a substrate shared by other components. This assembly model satisfies the need for big increases in performance while sidestepping some of the thorniest issues in heterogeneous integration. It establishes a midd... » read more

A High-Capacity Solution for Power and Signal Integrity on 2.5D Silicon Interposers


The present trends in technology — such as increasing demand for computational power from CPUs and GPUs, connectivity driven by Internet of Things (IoT), data demands around connected and self-driving cars, and the design of processors optimized for artificial intelligence (AI) — require more functionality from integrated circuits. As designers struggle to find ways to scale with complexity... » read more

Why There Are Still No Commercial 3D-ICs


Building chips in three dimensions is drawing increased attention and investment, but so far there have been no announcements about commercial 3D-IC chips. There are some fundamental problems that must be overcome and new tools that need to be developed. In contrast, the semiconductor industry is becoming fairly comfortable with 2.5D integration, where individual dies are assembled on some k... » read more

2023: A Good Year For Semiconductors


Looking back, 2023 has had more than its fair share of surprises, but who were the winners and losers? The good news is that by the end of the year, almost everyone was happy. That is not how we exited 2022, where there was overcapacity, inventories had built up in many parts of the industry, and few sectors — apart from data centers — were seeing much growth. The supposed new leaders we... » read more

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