Faster Time To Yield

By Ed Sperling - 23 Aug, 2016 - Comments: 2

Michael Jamiolkowski, president and CEO of Coventor, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about ways improve yield ramp and optimize designs. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Why does it take so long to get a chip all the way through to manufacturing? Jamiolkowski: There are three parts to that. There is a research side. You want to be able to explore new th... » read more

Pattern Matching In Test And Yield Analysis

By Geir Eide - 23 Jun, 2016 - Comments: 1

By Jonathan Muirhead and Geir Eide It’s no secret that a successful yield ramp directly impacts integrated circuit (IC) product cost and time-to-market. Tools and techniques that help companies ramp to volume faster, while also reducing process and design variability, can be the difference between profit and loss in a competitive market. And while pattern matching technology has been aroun... » read more

Pattern Matching in Design and Verification

By Michael White - 19 May, 2016 - Comments: 0

Pattern matching (PM) was first introduced as the semiconductor industry began to shift from simple one-dimensional rule checks to the two-dimensional checks required by sub-resolution lithography. These rule checks proved far more complex to write, hard to code for fast runtimes, and difficult to debug. Incorporating an automated visual capture and compare process enabled designers to define t... » read more

Internet of FD-SOI Things?

By Katherine Derbyshire - 18 Feb, 2016 - Comments: 0

Are fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) wafers having a moment? Certainly SOI wafers are not new. Soitec’s SmartCut layer transfer technology was patented in 1994, and wafers with implanted oxide layers were available before that. Still, adoption of SOI wafers has been limited. Though they offer improved device isolation and reduced parasitics, the increased wafer cost has been an ob... » read more

The Growing Role Of Extended Supply Chain Collaboration

By Karen Savala - 19 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

At the executive keynote panel held at Semicon West 2015, one of the key industry challenges discussed was the growing need for closer collaboration between supply chain partners in order to support the fast time to market and shortened product lifecycles of today’s consumer electronics. Traditionally, the yield ramp phase has been a critical time to resolve manufacturing issues, enable high ... » read more

Faster Time To Root Cause With Diagnosis-Driven Yield Analysis

By Mentor, a Siemens Business - 16 Apr, 2015 - Comments: 0

ICs developed at advanced technology nodes of 65 nm and below exhibit an increased sensitivity to small manufacturing variations. New design-specific and feature-sensitive failure mechanisms are on the rise. Complex variability issues that involve interactions between process and layout features can mask systematic yield issues. Without improved yield analysis methods, time-to-volume is delayed... » read more

When Will 2.5D Cut Costs?

By Brian Bailey - 07 Aug, 2014 - Comments: 2

There is a constant drive to reduce costs within the semiconductor industry and, up until now, [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] provided an easy path to enable this. By adopting each smaller node, transistors were cheaper, but that is no longer the case, as explained in a recent article. The industry will need to find new technologies to make this happen and some people are looking towards... » read more

Stacked Die Are Coming Soon. Really

By Ed Sperling - 10 Jul, 2014 - Comments: 3

Since the beginning of the decade there have been many predictions that stacked die were just over the hill, but the time it has taken to climb that hill has been longer than most people would have anticipated. In fact, TSMC has been fully capable of building stacked die since last year, with risk production expected to be completed by year, according to Gartner. But something very fundament... » read more

Gaps In Metrology Could Impact Yield

By Mark LaPedus - 17 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 0

For some time, chipmakers have been developing new and complex chip architectures, such as 3D NAND, finFETs and stacked die. But manufacturing these types of chips is no simple task. It requires a robust fab flow to enable new IC designs with good yields. In fact, yield is becoming a more critical part of the flow. Yield is a broad term that means different things to different parts of the ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Yield And Reliability Issues With Integrating IP

By Ed Sperling - 27 Jan, 2014 - Comments: 1

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of integrating IP in complex SoCs with Juan Rey, senior director of engineering at Mentor Graphics; Kevin Yee, product marketing director for Cadence’s SoC Realization Group; and Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at eSilicon. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: As an industry we’ve got a pretty good grasp ... » read more

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