Tuning Design And Process For High-NA EUV Stitching

By Kevin Lucas - 24 Oct, 2024 - Comments: 0

By Kevin Lucas and James Ban Upcoming 14A and 10A process nodes will use high-NA EUV anamorphic scanners, which will require two stitched half-fields to achieve the equivalent wafer exposure area of previous-generation scanners, see figure 1. The lithography patterning at a stitching boundary between two mask exposures will be affected by additional process variation than are encountered in ... » read more

Metrology Advances Step Up To Sub-2nm Device Node Needs

By Laura Peters - 15 Oct, 2024 - Comments: 0

Metrology and inspection are dealing with a slew of issues tied to 3D measurements, buried defects, and higher sensitivity as device features continue to shrink to 2nm and below. This is made even more challenging due to increasing pressure to ramp new processes more quickly. Metrology tool suppliers must exceed current needs by a process node or two to ensure solutions are ready to meet tig... » read more

Challenges And Outlook Of ATE Testing For 2nm SoCs

By Sriharsha Vinjamury - 08 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

The transition to the 2nm technology node introduces unprecedented challenges in Automated Test Equipment (ATE) bring-up and manufacturability. As semiconductor devices scale down, the complexity of testing and ensuring manufacturability increases exponentially. 3nm silicon is a mastered art now, with yields hitting pretty high for even complex packaged silicon, while the transition from 3nm to... » read more

Reducing Design Margins With Silicon Model Calibration

By Guy Cortez - 09 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

By Guy Cortez and Mark Laird It’s no secret to anyone that chip design gets harder every year. There are two major trends driving these ever-increasing challenges. The first is the continual scaling down to smaller design nodes. Although the pace of new node introduction has slowed somewhat in recent years, the impact of each new geometry and process is more dramatic than ever before. Acce... » read more

Design Flow Challenged By 3D-IC Process, Thermal Variation

By Karen Heyman - 27 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

3D-ICs are proving a challenge even for designers accustomed to dealing with power and performance tradeoffs, but they are considered an inevitable migration path for leading-edge designs due to the compute demands of AI and the continual shrinking of digital logic. 3D-ICs are widely viewed as the way to continue scaling beyond the limits of planar SoCs, and a way to add more heterogeneous d... » read more

Predicting And Preventing Process Drift

By Gregory Haley - 22 Apr, 2024 - Comments: 0

Increasingly tight tolerances and rigorous demands for quality are forcing chipmakers and equipment manufacturers to ferret out minor process variances, which can create significant anomalies in device behavior and render a device non-functional. In the past, many of these variances were ignored. But for a growing number of applications, that's no longer possible. Even minor fluctuations in ... » read more

What’s Missing In 2.5D EDA Tools

By Brian Bailey - 28 Mar, 2024 - Comments: 0

Gaps in EDA tool chains for 2.5D designs are limiting the adoption of this advanced packaging approach, which so far has been largely confined to high-performance computing. But as the rest of the chip industry begins migrating toward advanced packaging and chiplets, the EDA industry is starting to change direction. There are learning periods with all new technologies, and 2.5D advanced pack... » read more

Strategies For Detecting Sources Of Silent Data Corruption

By Anne Meixner - 12 Mar, 2024 - Comments: 0

Engineering teams are wrestling with how to identify the root causes of silent data corruption (SDC) in a timely and cost-effective way, but the solutions are turning out to be broader and more complex than simply fixing a single defect. This is particularly vexing for data center reliability, accessibility and serviceability (RAS) engineering teams, because even the best tools and methodolo... » read more

Speeding Up Design Closure

By Ed Sperling - 23 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Increasing complexity and smaller process nodes make it far more difficult to achieve design closure for chips. There are more physical effects to model, including noise, cross-talk, and double switching effects, all of which can slow the design process. Solaiman Rahim, vice president of engineering for Synopsys’ EDA Group, talks about why it’s so important to analyze violations in design, ... » read more

Impacts Of Process Flow, Scaling, And Variability On Interconnect Performance

By Lam Research - 26 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

Virtual fabrication is used to evaluate the performance of interconnects (line and via resistance, capacitance, etc.) across pitches compatible with either EUV single exposure or SADP for three different process flows: single damascene, dual damascene, and semi-damascene (subtractive metal etch). The effects of process variation for the three flows are also investigated to determine the relativ... » read more

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Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?