Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Packaging and test Advantest and PDF Solutions have launched their first jointly developed offering since forming a partnership in 2020. The new product is called the Advantest Cloud Solutions Dynamic Parametric Test (ACS DPT) solution. It integrates PDF Solutions’ Exensio portfolio of data analytics with Advantest’s V93000 Parametric Test System. The ACS DPT solution is designed to op... » read more

Gearing Up For Next-Gen Power Semis


After years in R&D, several vendors are moving closer to shipping power semiconductors and other products based on next-generation wide-bandgap technologies. These devices leverage the properties of new materials, such as aluminum nitride, diamond, and gallium oxide, and they are also utilized in different structures, such as vertical gallium-nitride power devices. But while many of thes... » read more

Will Monolithic 3D DRAM Happen?


As DRAM scaling slows, the industry will need to look for other ways to keep pushing for more and cheaper bits of memory. The most common way of escaping the limits of planar scaling is to add the third dimension to the architecture. There are two ways to accomplish that. One is in a package, which is already happening. The second is to sale the die into the Z axis, which which has been a to... » read more

In The Spotlight: What Is Responsible For The Surging Demand For CIS?


After TSMC announced plans to construct a new fab in Arizona, the Taiwan-based company disclosed that they are considering building new fabs in Japan and Germany. While the Arizona fab will focus on producing 5nm nodes using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) technology, the new plant in Japan reportedly would focus on the 28nm node. This 28nm fab in Japan would be in addition to a 28nm fab ... » read more

New Memories Add New Faults


New non-volatile memories (NVM) bring new opportunities for changing how we use memory in systems-on-chip (SoCs), but they also add new challenges for making sure they will work as expected. These new memory types – primarily MRAM and ReRAM – rely on unique physical phenomena for storing data. That means that new test sequences and fault models may be needed before they can be released t... » read more

Fabs Drive Deeper Into Machine Learning


Advanced machine learning is beginning to make inroads into yield enhancement methodology as fabs and equipment makers seek to identify defectivity patterns in wafer images with greater accuracy and speed. Each month a wafer fabrication factory produces tens of millions of wafer-level images from inspection, metrology, and test. Engineers must analyze that data to improve yield and to reject... » read more

Making Test Transparent With Better Data


Data is critical for a variety of processes inside the fab. The challenge is getting enough consistent data from different equipment and then plugging it back into the design, manufacturing, and test flows to quickly improve the process and uncover hard-to-find defective die. Progress is being made. The inspection and test industry is on the cusp of having more dynamic ways to access the dat... » read more

Angstrom-Level Measurements With AFMs


Competition is heating up in the atomic force microscopy (AFM) market, where several vendors are shipping new AFM systems that address various metrology challenges in packaging, semiconductors and other fields. AFM, a small but growing field that has been under the radar, involves a standalone system that provides surface measurements on structures down to the angstrom level. (1 angstrom = 0... » read more

Designing Chips For Test Data


Collecting data to determine the health of a chip throughout its lifecycle is becoming necessary as chips are used in more critical applications, but being able to access that data isn't always so simple. It requires moving signals through a complex, sometimes unpredictable, and often hostile environment, which is a daunting challenge under the best of conditions. There is a growing sense of... » read more

Reducing Rework In CMP: An Enhanced Machine Learning-Based Hybrid Metrology Approach


By Vamsi Velidandla, John Hauck, Zhuo Chen, Joshua Frederick, and Zhihui Jiao The semiconductor industry is constantly marching toward thinner films and complex geometries with smaller dimensions, as well as newer materials. The number of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) steps has increased and, with it, a greater need for within-wafer uniformity and wafer-to-wafer control of the thin... » read more

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