5G OTA Test Not Ready For Production


5G is poised to dominate the wireless world, but over-the-air (OTA) testing of 5G beamforming antennas is still not ready for volume production. Beamforming is a critical element in the millimeter wave version of 5G, because of the limitations of ultra-high-frequency signals. Unlike 4G and its predecessors, millimeter wave technology will not penetrate objects, so signals need to be directed... » read more

Power, Reliability And Security In Packaging


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced packaging with Ajay Lalwani, vice president of global manufacturing operations at eSilicon; Vic Kulkarni, vice president and chief strategist in the office of the CTO at ANSYS; Calvin Cheung, vice president of engineering at ASE; Walter Ng, vice president of business management at UMC; and Tien Shiah, senior manager for memory at Samsun... » read more

Case Study—RF ASIC Validation Of A Satellite Transceiver


ASIC validation in the RF world comes with its own set of hurdles and challenges, with high-quality lab equipment, experience and know-how essential. A recently completed RF sub-system validation at S3 Semiconductors is presented in the form of a case study of the execution. The validation PCB design focussed on impedance matching and shielding RF signals from noise sources. We built up an effi... » read more

Test Moving Forward And Backward


Test, once considered an important but rather mundane way of separating good chips from the not-so-good and the total rejects, is taking on a whole new life. After decades of largely living in the shadows behind design and advancements in materials and lithography, test has quietly shifted into a much more critical and more public role. But it has taken several rather significant shifts acro... » read more

Tessent Hierarchical ATPG Reference Flow for Arm Cortex-A75


Arm and Mentor have jointly developed a reference flow for a hierarchical DFT and ATPG implementation with Tessent for any Arm subsystem based on Cortex A-series IP. The reference flow, described in this paper, provides documentation, seamless interfaces, and scripts that accelerate the implementation of a hierarchical test solution. Arm and Mentor are dedicated to enabling customer success, re... » read more

5G Drives New Test Approaches


Test/validation providers are claiming steady progress in the race to deliver 5G network components that support millimeter-wave as well as lower-frequency networks. Going from a state of no existing off-the-shelf test equipment suitable for 5G standalone new radio (NR), test companies are introducing equipment that can handle mmWave component testing on a limited scale. 5G is a next-generat... » read more

ATE Lab To Fab


Shu Li, business development manager at Advantest, zeroes in on the communication gap between engineers on the design side and the manufacturing/test side, why it exists, and what needs to be done to bridge that gap in order to speed up and improve test quality. https://youtu.be/Nd-5_twbJBw     See other tech talk videos here » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Trade wars The trade war between the United States and China is escalating and it is here to stay. Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at think tank Hoover Institution, said the United States is at a crossroads with China. It could define America’s security and the international order for decades to come. Here’s the latest blog on trade tensions between the U.S. and China. “Tensions ... » read more

Why IP Quality Is So Difficult To Determine


Differentiating good IP from mediocre or bad IP is getting more difficult, in part because it depends up on how and where it is used and in part because even the best IP may work better in one system than another—even in chips developed by the same vendor. This has been one of the challenges with IP over the years. In many cases, IP is poorly characterized, regardless of whether that IP wa... » read more

Analog Fault Simulation


Anand Thiruvengadam, senior staff product marketing manager at Synopsys, drills down into the need for fault simulation in analog circuits in automotive designs. » read more

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