IC Stresses Affect Reliability At Advanced Nodes


Thermal-induced stress is now one of the leading causes of transistor failures, and it is becoming a top focus for chipmakers as more and different kinds of chips and materials are packaged together for safety- and mission-critical applications. The causes of stress are numerous. In heterogeneous packages, it can stem from multiple components composed of different materials. “These materia... » read more

Making Chips Yield Faster At Leading-Edge Nodes


Simulation for semiconductor manufacturing is heating up, particularly at the most advanced nodes where data needs to be analyzed in the context of factors such as variation and defectivity rates. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with David Fried, corporate vice president of computational products at Lam Research, to talk about what's behind Lam's recent acquisition of Esgee Technologies, ... » read more

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

Why Silent Data Errors Are So Hard To Find


Cloud service providers have traced the source of silent data errors to defects in CPUs — as many as 1,000 parts per million — which produce faulty results only occasionally and under certain micro-architectural conditions. That makes them extremely hard to find. Silent data errors (SDEs) are random defects produced in manufacturing, not a design bug or software error. Those defects gene... » read more

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