tag: PDF Solutions

Yield And Reliability Challenges At 7nm And Below
By PDF Solutions - 26 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

Layout Design Rules have been scaled very aggressively to enable the 7nm technology node without EUV. As a result, achieving acceptable performance and yield in High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) has become an extremely challenging task. Systematic yield and parametric variabilities have become quite significant. Moreover, due to overlay tolerance requirements and diminishing process windows, reli... » read more

BiST Vs. In-Circuit Sensors
By Susan Rambo - 13 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

Monitoring the health of a chip post-manufacturing, including how it is aging and performing over time, is becoming much more important as ICs make their way into safety-critical applications such as the central brain in automobiles. Faced with longer lifespans and a growing body of functional safety rules, systems vendors need to be able to predict when a part will fail. But as sensing auto... » read more

New Uses For Manufacturing Data
By Ed Sperling - 12 May, 2020 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry is becoming more reliant on data analytics to ensure that a chip will work as expected over its projected lifetime, but that data is frequently inconsistent or incomplete, and some of the most useful data is being hoarded by companies for competitive reasons. The volume of data is rising at each new process node, where there are simply more things to keep track of,... » read more

Sensing Automotive IC Failures
By Anne Meixner - 12 May, 2020 - Comments: 1

The sooner you detect a failure in any electronic system, the sooner you can act. Together, data analytics and on-chip sensors are poised to boost quality in auto chips and add a growing level of predictive maintenance for vehicles. The ballooning number of chips cars makes it difficult to reach 10 defective parts per billion for every IC that goes into a car.  And requiring that for a 15-y... » read more

Big Changes In Tiny Interconnects
By Ed Sperling - 16 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 1

One of the fundamental components of a semiconductor, the interconnect, is undergoing radical changes as chips scale below 7nm. Some of the most pronounced shifts are occurring at the lowest metal layers. As more and smaller transistors are packed onto a die, and as more data is processed and moved both on and off a chip or across a package, the materials used to make those interconnects, th... » read more

NVM Reliability Challenges And Tradeoffs
By Bryon Moyer - 13 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 0

This second of two parts looks at different memories and possible solutions. Part one can be found here. While various NVM technologies, such as PCRAM, MRAM, ReRAM and NRAM share similar high-level traits, their physical renderings are quite different. That provides each with its own set of challenges and solutions. PCRAM has had a fraught history. Initially released by Samsung, Micron, a... » read more

Inside The New Non-Volatile Memories
By Bryon Moyer - 07 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 0

The search continues for new non-volatile memories (NVMs) to challenge the existing incumbents, but before any technology can be accepted, it must be proven reliable. “Everyone is searching for a universal memory,” says TongSwan Pang, Fujitsu senior marketing manager. "Different technologies have different reliability challenges, and not all of them may be able to operate in automotive g... » read more

Reliability Challenges Grow For 5/3nm
By Ed Sperling And Susan Rambo - 07 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 0

Ensuring that chips will be reliable at 5nm and 3nm is becoming more difficult due to the introduction of new materials, new transistor structures, and the projected use of these chips in safety- and mission-critical applications. Each of these elements adds its own set of challenges, but they are being compounded by the fact that many of these chips will end up in advanced packages or modul... » read more

The Need For Traceability In Auto Chips
By Anne Meixner - 07 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 4

Someday your car will drive itself to a repair shop for a recall using a scheduling application that is both efficient and can prioritize which vehicles need to be fixed first. But that's still a ways off. Proactive identification of issues is not yet available. To be ready for that, today’s data analytics systems need to begin supporting targeted recalls, enabling predictive maintenance a... » read more

Holistic Yield Improvement Methodology
By PDF Solutions - 06 Apr, 2020 - Comments: 0

As new products and processes are being introduced into IC manufacturing at an accelerated rate, yield learning and ramping are becoming more challenging due to the increased interaction between the design and process. Compared to random defect caused yield losses, systematic yield loss mechanisms are becoming more important, thus initial yield ramping process becomes more challenging. A “hol... » read more

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