Chip Industry Week In Review


Chinese firms imported almost $26 billion worth of chipmaking machinery, according to fresh trade data released by China’s General Administration of Customs this week, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, the global semiconductor manufacturing industry continued to show signs of improvement in Q2 2024 with significant growth of IC sales, stabilizing capital expenditure, and an increase in install... » read more

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving


High-volume products get more than their fair share of attention in the semiconductor world, but most chips don't fit into that category. While a few huge fabs and offshore assembly and test (OSAT) houses process enormous volumes of chips, small fabs and packaging lines serve for lower volumes, specialized technology, and prototyping. “There are companies that run literally one lot of 25 w... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML. Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government... » read more

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms


The top three foundries plan to implement high-NA EUV lithography as early as 2025 for the 18 angstrom generation, but the replacement of single exposure high-NA (0.55) over double patterning with standard EUV (NA = 0.33) depends on whether it provides better results at a reasonable cost per wafer. So far, 2024 has been a banner year for high-numerical aperture EUV lithography. Intel Foundry... » read more

New Interconnect Metals Need New Dielectrics


Just as circuit metallization must evolve to manage resistance as features shrink, so must the dielectric half of the interconnect stack. For quite some time, manufacturers have needed a dielectric constant (k) less than 4, which is the value for SiO2, but they have struggled to find materials that combine a low dielectric constant with mechanical and chemical stability. In work presented at... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


The University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE) was awarded $840 million to establish a Department of Defense microelectronics manufacturing center. This center will focus on developing advanced semiconductor microsystems to enhance U.S. defense systems. The project is part of DARPA's NGMM Program. The U.S. Dept. of Commerce announced preliminary terms with Global... » read more

Intel Vs. Samsung Vs. TSMC


The three leading-edge foundries — Intel, Samsung, and TSMC — have started filling in some key pieces in their roadmaps, adding aggressive delivery dates for future generations of chip technology and setting the stage for significant improvements in performance with faster delivery time for custom designs. Unlike in the past, when a single industry roadmap dictated how to get to the next... » read more

CHIPS For America’s National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) Program


At this year’s Design Automation Conference, Jay Lewis, director of CHIPS for America National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) Program, gave a presentation on the status and direction of the Center, its priorities for this year and how the NSTC can change the long-term trajectory for innovation. Fig. 1: Dr. Jay Lewis, director of NSTC Program, CHIPS R&D Office at the Dept. o... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


The Design Automation Conference morphed into the Chips to Systems Conference, reflecting an industry shift from monolithic SoCs to assemblies of chiplets in various flavors of advanced packaging. The change drew a slew of students and a resurgent buzz, fueled by discussions about heterogeneous integration, reliability, and ways to leverage AI/ML to speed up design and verification processes. ... » read more

Opportunities Grow For GPU Acceleration


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of GPU acceleration on mask design and production and other process technologies, with Aki Fujimura, CEO of D2S; Youping Zhang, head of ASML Brion; Yalin Xiong, senior vice president and general manager of the BBP and reticle products division at KLA; and Kostas Adam, vice president of engineering at Synopsys. W... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →