Improving Concurrent Chip Design, Manufacturing, And Test Flows


Semiconductor design, manufacturing, and test are becoming much more tightly integrated as the chip industry seeks to optimize designs using fewer engineers, setting the stage for greater efficiencies and potentially lower chip costs without just relying on economies of scale. The glue between these various processes is data, and the chip industry is working to weave together various steps t... » read more

Where All The Semiconductor Investments Are Going


Companies and countries are funneling huge sums of money into semiconductor manufacturing, materials, and research — at least a half-trillion dollars over the next decade, and maybe much more — to guarantee a steady supply of chips and know-how to support growth across a wide swath of increasingly data-centric industries. The build-out of a duplicate supply chain that can guarantee capac... » read more

Semiconductor Manufacturing: Tradeoffs Between Performance, Energy Consumption & Cybersecurity Controls


A new research paper titled "Simulating Energy and Security Interactions in Semiconductor Manufacturing: Insights from the Intel Minifab Model" was published by researchers at Idaho National Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at San Antonio and George Mason University. Abstract: "Semiconductor manufacturing is a highly complex. Fabrication plants must deal with r... » read more

Which Foundry Is In The Lead? It Depends.


The multi-billion-dollar race for foundry leadership is becoming more convoluted and complex, making it difficult to determine which company is in the lead at any time because there are so many factors that need to be weighed. This largely is a reflection of changes in the customer base at the leading edge and the push toward domain-specific designs. In the past, companies like Apple, Google... » read more

Why Changes In Computing Are Driving Changes In Photomasks


Aki Fujimura, CEO of D2S, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about massive improvements in computation based upon increased density on chips, and why printing Manhattan shapes on a photomask are no longer sufficient to print high-performance devices with predictable reliability every time. He explains why a discontinuity in EDA physical design has opened the door for printing curvilinear shap... » read more

Visual Fault Inspection Using A Hybrid System Of Stacked DNNs


A technical paper titled "Improving automated visual fault inspection for semiconductor manufacturing using a hybrid multistage system of deep neural networks" was published by researchers at Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany). According to the paper, "this contribution introduces a novel hybrid multistage system of stacked deep neural networks (SH-DNN) which allows the localization... » read more

CHIPS Act: U.S. Releases New Implementation Strategy


The U.S. Department of Commerce today published "A Strategy For The CHIPS For America Fund," outlining its implementation approach to distributing $50 billion from the CHIPS Act of 2022. Find the full strategy paper here, and the executive summary here. Program Goals The program's four primary goals are: Establish and expand domestic production of leading edge semiconductors in ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


The U.S. Commerce Department issued export controls on key technologies, including gallium oxide (Ga2O3) and diamond substrates, which are used at high voltages and temperatures, as well as EDA tools specifically developed for GAA FETs. It's not clear how this will impact EDA companies, because many of the tools that will be used for designing for GAA FETs already are in use today for finFETs. ... » read more

Equipment Suppliers Brace For GaN Market Explosion


A huge GaN market is opening up, driven by consumer devices and the need for greater energy efficiency across many applications. Suppliers are ready, but to fully compete with SiC in high-voltage automotive applications will require further technological developments in power GaN (gallium nitride). Still, the 2020s mark a very high-growth phase for GaN markets. Revenues in the power GaN mark... » read more

The Human Hand: Curating Good Data And Creating An Effective Deep-Learning R2R Strategy For High-Volume Manufacturing


Currently, the semiconductor manufacturing industry uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to take data and autonomously learn from that data. With the additional data, AI and ML can be used to quickly discover patterns and determine correlations in various applications, most notably those applications involving metrology and inspection, whether in the front-end of the manufacturing ... » read more

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