tag: materials

Blog Review: July 4
By Jesse Allen - 04 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Applied Materials' Sundeep Bajikar argues that to get the full benefits of AI, new computing architectures are needed – and that will require new breakthroughs in materials engineering to get beyond classic 2D scaling. Cadence's Tom Wong considers to what extent chip dis-integration is happening and how the industry can cope with the escalating costs of new process nodes and higher-speed i... » read more

Surface Modification: Solving Semiconductor Manufacturing Challenges
By Reuben Chacko - 07 May, 2018 - Comments: 0

Process reliability and faster technology deployment are two of the most pressing manufacturing challenges currently facing the semiconductor industry. In a world of ever-evolving technology and innovation, engineers are working to transform materials that don’t possess all the desired functions through a method called “surface modification” – the act of modifying a material’s surface... » read more

Silicon’s Long Game
By Ed Sperling - 18 Dec, 2017 - Comments: 0

The era of all-silicon substrates and copper wires may be coming to an end. Progress in the future increasingly depends on more exotic combinations of materials that are developed for specific applications. But after years of predicting the death of silicon, it appears those predictions may be premature. That's not always obvious, given the growing number of chemical combinations being creat... » read more

The Materials Gap
By Ed Sperling - 21 Sep, 2017 - Comments: 0

When consolidation thinned the ranks of semiconductor foundries and equipment makers, materials companies figured things were about to get better. They haven't. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, semiconductors are now so complex and difficult to develop that a slew of innovations are required on all sides. Everyone is familiar with transistor structures, interconnects and lithog... » read more

Can A Supply Chain Be Too Efficient?
By Ed Sperling - 20 Jul, 2017 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry is a model of efficiency—literally. When other industries look at adding smart manufacturing into their operations, they often look to chip manufacturing as a shining example. After decades of business gyrations, semiconductor companies have figured out how to instill efficiency into every aspect of making chips. This is evident in device scaling. At 90nm, the co... » read more

Is 7nm The Last Major Node?
By Ed Sperling - 20 Jul, 2017 - Comments: 3

A growing number of design and manufacturing issues are prompting questions about what scaling will really look like beyond 10/7nm, how many companies will be involved, and which markets they will address. At the very least, node migrations will go horizontally before proceeding numerically. There are expected to be more significant improvements at 7nm than at any previous node, so rather th... » read more

Changing Direction In Chip Design
By Ed Sperling - 26 Jan, 2017 - Comments: 1

Andrzej Strojwas, chief technologist at PDF Solutions and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University—and the winner of this year's Phil Kaufman Award for distinguished contributions to EDA—sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about device scaling, why the semiconductor industry will begin to fragment around new architectures and packaging, and ... » read more

Betting On Power And Deep Learning
By Ed Sperling - 13 Oct, 2016 - Comments: 0

Jim Hogan, managing partner of Vista Ventures, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about what investments deliver the biggest returns, how quickly, and why there are so few investors in some big growth areas. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What are you investing in these days and why? Hogan: I have about 15 active deals right now. I generally invest in thi... » read more

Making Manufacturing Sustainable For Chips
By Katherine Derbyshire - 28 Sep, 2016 - Comments: 5

There is widespread agreement that fabs and manufacturers in general should operate in a sustainable way, but what exactly does that mean? And what concrete steps can fabs take toward that goal? Once we get past the simplistic “more sustainable is better,” things tend to get pretty fuzzy. Consider the definition of sustainability itself. Corporate responsibility reports and similar docum... » read more

Controlling Heat
By Ann Mutschler - 12 Sep, 2016 - Comments: 0

Modeling on-chip thermal characteristics and chip-package interactions is becoming much more critical for advanced designs, but how to get there isn't always clear. Every chip, based on its target application, has a thermal design power (TDP) target. This is the typical power it can consume without overreaching the acceptable thermal limits in its intended environment. But in order to rate t... » read more

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