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

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


OEMs For some time, the automotive industry has suffered due to chip shortages in the market. And the chip shortages are spreading into other markets. In the latest news, GM plans to idle key truck plants amid chip shortages, according to a report from Bloomberg. “GM said eight of its 14 North American assembly plants will experience shutdowns this month because of chip shortages, includi... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Synaptics will acquire DSP Group, a provider of voice and wireless chipset solutions for converged communications, at $22.00 per share in an all-cash transaction. The deal is worth $538 million. "We continue to invest in technologies that tilt our product mix toward IoT applications," said Michael Hurlston, President and CEO of Synaptics. "DSP Group's expertise in SmartVoice and ULE wireless so... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi registered its electric vehicle (EV) business (Xiaomi EV) with an initial investment of RMB $10 billion (USD$1.5B). Xiaomi plans to invest USD $10 billion in Xiaomi EV over 10 years, under the leadership of Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi.  Currently, Xiaomi EV has approximately 300 employees. Xiaomi also acquired autonomous driving technology company... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 1


Arm's Fernando Garcia Redondo, Pranay Prabhat, and Mudit Bhargava continue their exploration of MRAM simulation by explaining stochasticity experiments and a characterization framework that focuses on the MRAM behavior statistical analysis. Siemens EDA's Neil Johnson shows how performance profiling can be used to identify testbench code that could slow down simulation and when to start using i... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs Reports have surfaced that TSMC has delayed its 3nm process. But TSMC says the technology remains on track. Volume production for TSMC’s 3nm is still scheduled for the second half of 2022. On the flip side, there is speculation that TSMC may increase its wafer prices by up to 20%, according to a report from the Taipei Times. Here's another report. This is due to chip shortag... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 25


Arm's Fernando Garcia Redondo, Pranay Prabhat, and Mudit Bhargava introduce an open source framework and compact model for the simulation, characterization, and analysis of MRAM magnetic tunnel junctions. Siemens EDA's Chris Spear continues the tutorial on SystemVerilog class variables with a look at how to use the $cast() system task to copy between base and derived class variables. Syno... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs At Intel’s Architecture Day this week, the company revealed several new chip architectures. Some were already announced, while others are new. These include Intel’s first performance hybrid architecture, a data center architecture, a discrete gaming graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture, infrastructure processing units (IPUs), and a data center GPU architecture. Here... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Security Infineon Technologies is coordinating a group of twelve partners, including researchers, electronics industry, and end users, who are working to find and fix IoT security flaws. The research project, called “Design methods and hardware/software co-verification for the unique identifiability of electronic components” falls under VE-VIDES, which is part of the Trustworthy Electronic... » read more

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