Improving Reliability In Chips


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss changes in test that address tracing device quality throughout a product’s lifetime with Tom Katsioulas, CEO at Archon Design Solutions and U.S. Department of Commerce IoT advisory board member; Ming Zhang, vice president of R&D Acceleration at PDF Solutions; and Uzi Baruch, chief strategy officer at proteanTecs. What follows are excerpts of t... » read more

Pinpointing Timing Delays in Complex SoCs


Telemetry circuits are becoming a necessity in complex heterogeneous chips and packages to show how these devices are behaving post-production, but fusing together relevant data to identify the sources of problems adds its own set of challenges. In the past, engineering teams could build margin into chips to offset any type of variation. But at advanced nodes and in advanced packages, tolera... » read more

Test Challenges Mount As Demands For Reliability Increase


An emphasis of improving semiconductor quality is beginning to spread well beyond just data centers and automotive applications, where ICs play a role in mission- and safety-critical applications. But this focus on improved reliability is ratcheting up pressure throughout the test community, from lab to fab and into the field, in products where transistor density continues to grow — and wh... » read more

New Data Management Challenges


An explosion in semiconductor design and manufacturing data, and the expanding use of chips in safety-critical and mission-critical applications, is prompting chipmakers to collect and manage that data more effectively in order to improve overall performance and reliability. This collection of data reveals a number of challenges with no simple solutions. Data may be siloed and inconsistent, ... » read more

The Drive Toward More Predictive Maintenance


Maintenance is a critical behind-the-scenes activity that keeps manufacturing facilities running and data centers humming. But when not performed in a timely manner, it can result in damaged products or equipment, or significant system/equipment downtime. By shifting from scheduled maintenance to predictive maintenance, factories and electronic system owners can reap substantial benefits, in... » read more

Monitoring Performance From Inside A Chip


Deep data, which is generated inside the chip rather than externally, is becoming more critical at each new process node and in advanced packages. Uzi Baruch, chief strategy officer at proteanTecs, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about using that data to identify potential problems before they result in failures in the field, and why it's essential to monitor these devices throughout their... » read more

Making Chips To Last Their Expected Lifetimes


Chips are supposed to last their lifetime, but that expectation varies greatly depending upon the end market, whether the device is used for safety- or mission-critical applications, and even whether it can be easily replaced or remotely fixed. It also depends on how those chips are used, whether they are an essential part of a complex system, and whether the cost of continual monitoring and... » read more

How To Build A Modern Network


There have, in recent years, been fundamental changes to the way in which networks are implemented, as data demands have necessitated a wider breadth of functionality and elevated degrees of operational performance. Accompanying all this is a greater need for accurate measurement of such performance benchmarks in real time, plus in-depth analysis in order to identify and subsequently resolve an... » read more

Network Telemetry Solutions For Data Center And Enterprise Networks


One of the most prominent trends in the networking community in the last few years is network telemetry, which enables accurate measurement of the network’s performance in real-time. In this white paper we will discuss how network telemetry is evolving in modern data center networks. Details will then be given of how the generic approach to network telemetry that has been taken by Marvell is... » read more