Where Is Selective Deposition?


For years, the industry has been working on an advanced technology called area-selective deposition for chip production at 5nm and beyond. Area-selective deposition, an advanced self-aligned patterning technique, is still in R&D amid a slew of challenges with the technology. But the more advanced forms of technology are beginning to make some progress, possibly inching closer from the la... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Intel has announced the resignation of Brian Krzanich as chief executive and a member of the board. The board has named Chief Financial Officer Robert Swan as interim chief executive, effective immediately. Intel was recently informed that Krzanich had a “past consensual relationship” with an Intel employee. This is a violation of Intel’s non-fraternization policy, which ap... » read more

Etch Techniques for Next-Generation Storage-Class Memory


Chipmakers make abundant use of two very different functional classes of memory in their products. For operational use (main/primary memory) where speed is critical, DRAM and SRAM are employed, whereas for long-term storage, flash memory – in particular NAND – provides the high capacity at low cost needed. For both classes, efforts to improve speed, capacity, and power usage are ongoing. To... » read more

Dealing With Resistance In Chips


Chipmakers continue to scale the transistor at advanced nodes, but they are struggling to maintain the same pace with the other two critical parts of the device—the contacts and interconnects. That’s beginning to change, however. In fact, at 10nm/7nm, chipmakers are introducing new topologies and materials such as cobalt, which promises to boost the performance and reduce unwanted resist... » read more

Big Trouble At 3nm


As chipmakers begin to ramp up 10nm/7nm technologies in the market, vendors are also gearing up for the development of a next-generation transistor type at 3nm. Some have announced specific plans at 3nm, but the transition to this node is expected to be a long and bumpy one, filled with a slew of technical and cost challenges. For example, the design cost for a 3nm chip could exceed an eye-p... » read more

Blog Review: June 20


Mentor's Randy Allen digs into OpenACC, a collection of directives and routines to help a compiler uncover and schedule parallelism, plus an examination of the GCC implementation's performance. Cadence's Paul McLellan takes a look at the shifting opinions on FD-SOI vs. finFET as Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research finds most see the two as complementary technologies in his latest survey. Synop... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers and OEMs Tesla Motors has been struggling to get its new electric car, the Model 3, out the door. And it recently implemented a layoff amid ongoing losses. But the struggling car maker could be in the midst of a rebound. “Based on our checks, we believe the perceived quality of Model 3s coming off the lines continue to improve relative to prior checks, and we view this as one of t... » read more

Advanced Packaging Confusion


Advanced packaging is exploding in all directions. There are more chipmakers utilizing different packaging options, more options for the packages themselves, and a confusing array of descriptions and names being used for all of these. Several years ago, there were basically two options on the table, 3D-ICs and 2.5D. But as chipmakers began understanding the difficulty, cost and reduced benef... » read more

Blog Review: June 13


Synopsys' Taylor Armerding looks at what the flaws in OpenPGP and S/MIME encryption means for the IoT and warns that the problems of patching such devices could lead to an increasing chance of security failures. Cadence's Paul McLellan takes a peek at Imec's roadmap to see what the path to 3nm looks like, how nanosheets fit in, and why design and system technology co-optimization is necessar... » read more

Delivering On The Promise Of Self-Driving Cars


Self-driving cars have been all the rage in both the trade and popular press in recent years. I prefer the term “autonomous vehicles,” which more broadly captures the possibilities, encompassing not only small passenger vehicles but mass transit and industrial vehicles as well. Depending on who’s talking, we will all be riding in fully autonomous vehicles in five to 25 years. The five-... » read more

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