Advanced Packaging Requires Better Yield

By Ed Sperling - 17 Nov, 2016 - Comments: 1

Whether Moore's Laws truly ends, or whether the semiconductor industry reaches into the Angstrom world after 3nm—the semiconductor industry dislikes fractions—advanced packaging increasingly will dominate semiconductor designs. Apple already is on board with its iPhone 7, using TSMC's fan-out approach. And all of the major foundries and OSATs are lining up with a long list of capabilitie... » read more

Politics And (Low) Power

By Ed Sperling - 10 Nov, 2016 - Comments: 4

This week the entire semiconductor market woke up with a severe political hangover. Aside from the initial shock of the election results themselves, the winning platform of "America First" could have far-reaching implications for an industry that has spent decades optimizing a global supply chain the way it has finely tuned other processes to reduce the cost per transistor. There are many un... » read more

Grappling With Manufacturing Data

By Ed Sperling - 22 Sep, 2016 - Comments: 2

As complexity goes up with each new process node, so does the amount of data that is generated, from initial GDSII to photomasks, manufacturing, yield and post-silicon validation. But what happens to that data, and what gets shared, remain a point of contention among companies across the semiconductor ecosystem. The problem is that to speed up the entire design through manufacturing process,... » read more

Changing Economics In Chip Manufacturing

By Ed Sperling - 18 Aug, 2016 - Comments: 1

The foundry and equipment businesses are poised for significant changes that could affect the balance of power far beyond just the semiconductor manufacturing sector. It’s no secret that the number of companies developing new chips at 7nm is shrinking. There will be even fewer at 5nm. The business case for moving forward is that density must provide a competitive edge. But that density imp... » read more

Data Analytics To Drive IC Shift

By Paula Doe - 28 Jun, 2016 - Comments: 0

The adoption of predictive analytics has the potential to drive the next round of IC industry innovation and growth. Much of the necessary data handling technology is now available from other sectors. However, to fully capitalize on the possibilities, the IC manufacturing world faces particular challenges in figuring out how to get a high yield of actionable information from its streams of vari... » read more

Behind The Scenes In Nanoimprint Lithography

By Jan Willis - 17 Mar, 2016 - Comments: 0

Doug Resnick, VP of marketing and business development at Canon Nanotechnologies, talks about why Canon bought Molecular Imprints, the surprises behind that acquisition, and the problems faced by the semconductor industry moving forward. [youtube vid=NJTxFu-_6GI] » read more

Inside The OSAT Business

By Mark LaPedus - 17 Mar, 2016 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the IC-packaging industry, foundries, China and other topics with Tien Wu, chief operating officer at Taiwan's Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), the world's largest outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) vendor. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What is your overall outlook for 2016? Wu: Last year, the semi... » read more

7nm Lithography Choices

By Mark LaPedus - 07 Mar, 2016 - Comments: 2

Chipmakers are ramping up their 16nm/14nm logic processes, with 10nm expected to move into early production later this year. Barring a major breakthrough in lithography, chipmakers are using today’s 193nm immersion and multiple patterning for both 16/14nm and 10nm. Now, chipmakers are focusing on the lithography options for 7nm. For this, they hope to use a combination of two technologies ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 8

By Mark LaPedus - 08 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Quantum computing At this week’s IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in Washington, D.C., chipmakers, research institutes and universities presented a plethora of papers on several subjects. A large number of papers revolve around the same theme—How to extend Moore’s Law. For this, researchers are working on a number of short- and long-term technologies to propel device... » read more

Shrinking R&D Pool

By Ed Sperling - 20 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 2

The rule of thumb in business is that consolidation in a maturing industry improves the health of the surviving companies. In most market sectors that's true. In the semiconductor industry, that formula doesn't work. The reason is due to what might well be called foundational economics. While it's possible to reduce costs in making chips for years to come, at some point the basic building bl... » 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