Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

By Mark LaPedus - 30 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers GlobalFoundries has announced that its advanced silicon-germanium (SiGe) offering is available for prototyping on 300mm wafers. GF’s SiGe technology has been shipping on its 200mm production line in Burlington, Vt. The technology, a 90nm SiGe process, is moving to 300mm wafers at GF’s Fab 10 facility in East Fishkill, N.Y. The SiGe technology is called 9HP. “The increasing ... » read more

Machine Learning Moves Into Fab And Mask Shop

By Mark LaPedus - 14 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and chip and photomask manufacturing technologies with Aki Fujimura, chief executive of D2S; Jerry Chen, business and ecosystem development manager at Nvidia; Noriaki Nakayamada, senior technologist at NuFlare; and Mikael Wahlsten, director and product area manager at Mycronic. What follows are excerpt... » read more

Using DSA With EUV

By Ed Sperling - 05 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 1

James Lamb, deputy CTO for advanced semiconductor manufacturing and corporate technical fellow at Brewer Science, looks at how directed self-assembly can be used to supplement EUV at advanced nodes. https://youtu.be/PItF4egHOxc See other tech talk videos here » read more

Defect Reduction At 7/5nm

By Ed Sperling - 12 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Darin Collins, director of metrology at Brewer Science, talks about the cause of defects at advanced nodes and how material purity increasingly plays a role in overall quality and yield. » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing

By Mark LaPedus - 08 Jun, 2018 - Comments: 0

Fab tools Applied Materials has launched a suite of products that will enable cobalt metallization schemes for contacts and interconnects in chips at advanced nodes. The products from Applied enable a complete cobalt fill process. The tools include CMP, CVD, PVD and RTP systems. At advanced nodes, cobalt promises to reduce unwanted resistance in the critical parts of a chip. Cobalt is bein... » read more

IIoT And Predictive Maintenance

By Jeff Dorsch - 30 May, 2018 - Comments: 1

It’s every production line manager’s nightmare—some machinery breaks down, stopping production on the factory floor. In a fab, if just one piece of semiconductor manufacturing equipment goes down and is out of service for hours, wafer fabrication can grind to a halt. Such shutdowns are expensive, especially if the plant is operating on a 24-hour schedule to meet demand. One selling poi... » read more

Variation Spreads At 10/7nm

By Ed Sperling - 16 Nov, 2017 - Comments: 6

Variation between different manufacturing equipment is becoming increasingly troublesome as chipmakers push to 10/7nm and beyond. Process variation is a well-known phenomenon at advanced nodes. But some of that is actually due to variations in equipment—sometimes the exact same model from the same vendor. Normally this would fall well below the radar of the semiconductor industry. But as t... » read more

Using Data To Improve Yield

By Jeff Dorsch - 17 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor manufacturers are always looking for an edge to improve operating efficiency and to increase yields on chip lots. For some, the answers include big data analytics, as well as technology to move that data around more quickly. Chipmakers, board assemblers, and related businesses are turning to the Internet of Things, especially [getkc id="78" kc_name="Industrial IoT"] technology... » read more

Smart Manufacturing Gains Momentum

By Ed Sperling - 05 Jan, 2017 - Comments: 0

Smart manufacturing is gaining traction as a way of addressing increased market fragmentation while still leveraging economies of scale. The goal is to add a level of flexibility into manufacturing processes that until recently was considered impossible. Although the approach makes sense in theory, real-world implementation is proving far from consistent. Sometimes referred to as Industr... » read more

Fab Tool Biz Faces Challenges In 2017

By Mark LaPedus - 15 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 3

After experiencing a gradual recovery and positive growth in 2016, the semiconductor equipment industry sees a mixed picture as well as some uncertainty in 2017. In the near term, though, business is robust. Several chipmakers started to place a sizeable number of fab tool orders in the latter part of 2016, particularly in three areas—3D NAND, logic and foundry. Now, after buying the in... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
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

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?

by Brian Bailey

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

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer

tag: semiconductor manufacturing