Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

By Mark LaPedus - 01 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers China has created a new $29 billion fund to help advance its semiconductor sector, according to reports from Bloomberg and others. Here's another report. The The U.S. and China are in the midst of a trade war. This has prompted China to accelerate its efforts to become more self-sufficient in semiconductor design and production. This includes DRAMs as well as logic/foundry. -----... » read more

Making Random Variation Less Random

By Ed Sperling - 21 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 0

The economics for random variation are changing, particularly at advanced nodes and in complex packaging schemes. Random variation always will exist in semiconductor manufacturing processes, but much of what is called random has a traceable root cause. The reason it is classified as random is that it is expensive to track down all of the various quirks in a complex manufacturing process or i... » read more

Reducing Costly Flaws In Heterogeneous Designs

By Ed Sperling - 08 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 0

The cost of defects is rising as chipmakers begin adding multiple chips into a package, or multiple processor cores and memories on the same die. Put simply, one bad wire can spoil an entire system. Two main issues need to be solved to reduce the number of defects. The first is identifying the actual defect, which becomes more difficult as chips grow larger and more complex, and whenever chi... » read more

Circuit-Device Co-design for High Performance Mixed-Signal Technologies

By PDF Solutions - 07 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 0

System-on-Chip designs require low cost integration of analog and digital blocks. Often, the analog requirements are not considered sufficiently early in the device design cycle, resulting in devices that are suboptimal for the analog components. This paper presents an innovative methodology for deriving comprehensive device specifications based upon a set of Figure-ofMerit circuits which accou... » read more

How Hardware Can Bias AI Data

By Ed Sperling - 10 Sep, 2019 - Comments: 1

Clean data is essential to good results in AI and machine learning, but data can become biased and less accurate at multiple stages in its lifetime—from moment it is generated all the way through to when it is processed—and it can happen in ways that are not always obvious and often difficult to discern. Blatant data corruption produces erroneous results that are relatively easy to ident... » read more

Test On New Technology’s Frontiers

By Ed Sperling And Susan Rambo - 10 Sep, 2019 - Comments: 2

Semiconductor testing is getting more complicated, more time-consuming, and increasingly it requires new approaches that have not been fully proven because the technologies they are addressing are so new. Several significant shifts are underway that make achieving full test coverage much more difficult and confidence in the outcome less certain. Among them: Devices are more connected an... » read more

More Semiconductor Data Moving To Cloud

By Ed Sperling - 06 Aug, 2019 - Comments: 0

The cloud is booming. After years of steady growth it has begun to spike, creating new options for design, test, analytics and AI, all of which have an impact on every segment of the semiconductor industry. The initial idea behind the cloud is that it would supplement processing done on premises, adding extra processing power wherever necessary, such as in the verification and debug stages o... » read more

Using Better Data To Shorten Test Time

By Ed Sperling - 06 Aug, 2019 - Comments: 1

The combination of machine learning plus more sensors embedded into IC manufacturing equipment is creating new possibilities for more targeted testing and faster throughput for fabs and OSATs. The goal is to improve quality and reduce the cost of manufacturing complex chips, where time spent in manufacturing is ballooning at the most advanced nodes. As the number of transistors on a die incr... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

By Mark LaPedus - 02 Aug, 2019 - Comments: 0

Trade wars Talks between the United States and China continue to stall and the two nations are still embroiled in a trade war. So this week, U.S. President Donald Trump would like to impose a 10% tariff on the remaining $300 billion list of China-based imports starting Sept. 1, according to a report from Reuters. This in turn will impact the electronics and IC industries. In response to the... » read more

Tackling Safety And Security

By Brian Bailey - 10 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss industry attitudes towards safety and security with Dave Kelf, chief marketing officer for Breker Verification; Jacob Wiltgen, solutions architect for functional safety at Mentor, a Siemens Business; David Landoll, solutions architect for OneSpin Solutions; Dennis Ciplickas, vice president of characterization solutions at PDF Solutions; Andrew Dauma... » read more

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tag: PDF Solutions

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

Making Random Variation Less Random

Reducing Costly Flaws In Heterogeneous Designs

Circuit-Device Co-design for High Performance Mixed-Signal Technologies

How Hardware Can Bias AI Data

Test On New Technology’s Frontiers

More Semiconductor Data Moving To Cloud

Using Better Data To Shorten Test Time

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

Tackling Safety And Security