Veterans Could Close The Semi Industry’s Workforce Gap


Veterans are beginning to form a valuable talent pool for advanced manufacturing and chip-sector positions, helping to fill the current and projected future gap in qualified workers as new fabs come online, and adding discipline and skills that are difficult to find otherwise. The job opportunities are many, and so are the possible job paths. In some cases, veterans are looking to make a qui... » read more

The Future Of Fault Coverage In Chips


Heterogeneous integration and sophisticated packaging are making chips more difficult to test, necessitating more versatile and efficient testing methods to minimize the time and cost it takes for each test insertion. In the past, test costs typically were limited to about 2% of the total cost of a chip. That cost has been rising in recent years, and with chiplets, advanced packaging, and mo... » read more

Battery Management Testing: Alleviating EV Buyer Anxiety


As the electric vehicle (EV) market surges towards 2040, fueled by strong consumer enthusiasm, the need to address key concerns about EV range, reliability, and battery life has become critical. Anxiety over potential range limitations, amplified by fears of scarce charging options, alongside safety worries due to media-reported battery incidents, have slowed adoption rates. Here, the semicondu... » read more

Doing More At Functional Test


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the increasing importance of functional test, especially in high-performance computing, with Klaus-Dieter Hilliges, V93000 platform extension manager at Advantest Europe; Robert Cavagnaro, fellow in the Design Engineering Group at Intel (responsible for manufacturing and test strategy of data center products); Nitza Basoco, tec... » read more

Secure Movement Of Data In Test


Historically, test data flowed out of the tester and was loaded into a file. But with heterogeneous integration, including chiplets and IP from multiple vendors, test data is now being streamed across the manufacturing floor where it can be used to make real-time decisions. Eli Roth, product manager for smart manufacturing at Teradyne, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about challenges in da... » read more

IC Test And Quality Requirements Drive New Collaboration


Rapidly increasing chip and package complexity, coupled with an incessant demand for more reliability, has triggered a frenzy of alliances and working relationships that are starting to redefine how chips are tested and monitored. At the core of this shift is a growing recognition that no company can do everything, and that to work together will require much tighter integration of flows, met... » read more

Early STEM Education Key To Growing Future Chip Workforce


A key factor in building a domestic workforce for the chip industry is attracting kids to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects at a younger age. That way they are more likely to follow through and attain the skills and degrees needed to enter the semiconductor job market. Industry and government are partnering with schools and community organizations to address the chal... » read more

DTCO/STCO Create Path For Faster Yield Ramps


Higher density in planar SoCs and advanced packages, coupled with more complex interactions and dependencies between various components, are permitting systematic defects to escape traditional detection methods. These issues increasingly are not detected until the chips reach high-volume manufacturing, slowing the yield ramp and bumping up costs. To combat these problems, IDMs and systems co... » read more

AI/ML Challenges In Test and Metrology


The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) into semiconductor test and metrology is redefining the landscape for chip fabrication, which will be essential at advanced nodes and in increasingly dense advanced packages. Fabs today are inundated by vast amounts of data collected across multiple manufacturing processes, and AI/ML solutions are viewed as essential for... » read more

Strategies For Detecting Sources Of Silent Data Corruption


Engineering teams are wrestling with how to identify the root causes of silent data corruption (SDC) in a timely and cost-effective way, but the solutions are turning out to be broader and more complex than simply fixing a single defect. This is particularly vexing for data center reliability, accessibility and serviceability (RAS) engineering teams, because even the best tools and methodolo... » read more

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