Digital Twins: The Cloud’s The Limit


Key Takeaways Digital twins are gaining traction as a way of testing different options at every step of the design-through-manufacturing flow. AI can be used to glue together disparate data types in multi-physics simulations. The promise of digital twins is huge, but multiple challenges need to be solved before it can live up to its potential. Digital twin technology is draw... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Geopolitics U.S. lawmakers are urging tighter export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) to China, warning existing loopholes threaten national security. "China is working to build domestic SME by exploiting access to U.S. and allied subcomponents required to produce tools," states the letter, which also says better coordination with allies is essential. The U.S.... » read more

Beyond Optical: A New E-Beam Inspection For Advanced Chips


The semiconductor industry is defined by its relentless pursuit of smaller, faster, and more powerful chips. As we push into advanced 3D architectures like gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, a critical challenge emerges: finding the defects that kill yield. Many of these flaws are deeply buried within complex structures and impossible to see with traditional optical inspection. This creates ... » read more

Impact of the Gate and Fin Space Variation on Stress Modulation and FinFET Transistor Performance


Device scaling in advanced CMOS nodes is becoming more difficult due to patterning limitations and complex 3-D transistor integration schemes. This also makes the devices more sensitive to patterning variability. The presented study investigates the impact of poly pitch and fin pitch variability on stress-induced performance variation in 7nm FinFET transistors. Variations in critical dimension ... » read more

Chiplets Add More Inspection And Test Steps


Key Takeaways Ensuring the reliability of multi-die assemblies requires a variety of approaches to detect subsurface defects. Bonds and interconnects are especially problematic and require more inspection insertions. Ensuring reliability requires connecting fragmented data that is often siloed. The shift to multi-die assemblies is forcing changes in how chips are tested and ... » read more

Big Changes Ahead For Semiconductor Manufacturing


John Kibarian, CEO of PDF Solutions, talks with Semiconductor Engineering's Ed Sperling about the growing role of AI in chip manufacturing, the impact of 3D-ICs on the supply chain, and how to shorten cycle time to get leading-edge chips and multi-die assemblies to market more quickly. To listen, click here.   » read more

Will 2026 Be Dominated By AI?


Many opportunities and problems became highly interlinked in 2025, fueled by the historic growth in everything AI. But how close are we coming to breaking points, and what are people doing to mitigate them? That is the story that will unfold this year. AI's penetration into an increasing number of workloads is placing almost quadratic demands on compute, memory, interconnect, and the archite... » read more

Wafer Probe Struggles To Adapt To Multi-Die Assemblies


Wafer probe, one of the key processes for ensuring reliability in semiconductor manufacturing, is becoming increasingly unreliable in multi-die assemblies and at leading-edge nodes. For much of the semiconductor industry’s history, wafer probe occupied a stable, largely uncontested role in manufacturing. It was understood as a screening step, an electrical checkpoint to identify failing de... » read more

Semiconductor Manufacturing In The AI Era


At the 2025 PDF Solutions Users Conference, CEO John Kibarian delivered a wide-ranging keynote that positioned the semiconductor industry at a pivotal inflection point, one driven by explosive AI demand but constrained by unprecedented manufacturing complexity. His central message: the path to a trillion-dollar semiconductor industry by 2030 requires fundamentally rethinking how manufacturers c... » read more

Secure Data Sharing Becoming Critical For Chip Manufacturing


Semiconductor companies increasingly need to share data to solve problems faster, boost yield, and trace the root cause of failed devices. But to make that work, companies need assurances that their data will be secure, free from data leaks that could result in the loss of valuable IP. Data sharing is becoming critical at leading device nodes, where process variability is starting to consume... » read more

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