The Quest To Make 5G Systems Reliable


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss 5G reliability with Anthony Lord, director of RF product marketing at FormFactor; Noam Brousard, system vice president at proteanTecs; Andre van de Geijn, business development manager at yieldHUB; and David Hall, head of semiconductor marketing at National Instruments. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: How do we measure the reli... » read more

What’s WAT? An Overview Of WAT/PCM Data


Wafer acceptance testing (WAT) also known as process control monitoring (PCM) data is data generated by the fab at the end of manufacturing and generally made available to the fabless customer for every wafer. The data will typically have between forty and one hundred tests, each test having a result for each site (or “drop-in”) on the wafer. The sites are located so that the fab can monito... » read more

Good Vs. Bad Acquisitions


M&A activity is beginning to heat up across the semiconductor industry, fueled by high market caps, low interest rates, and a slew of startups with innovative technology and limited market reach. Some of these deals are gigantic, such as the pending acquisition of Arm by Nvidia, and the proposed purchase of Maxim Integrated by Analog Devices. Others are more modest, such as Arteris IP's ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers and OEMs NXP has announced the grand opening of its 150mm (6-inch) RF gallium nitride (GaN) fab in Chandler, Ariz. This is said to be the most advanced fab dedicated to 5G RF power amplifiers in the United States. NXP’s new Chandler-based GaN fab is qualified now, with initial products ramping in the market and expected to reach full capacity by the end of 2020. GaN, a III-V techn... » read more

New Data Format Boosts Test Analytics


Demand for more and better data for test is driving a major standards effort, paving the way for one of most significant changes in data formats in years. There is good reason for this shift. Data from device testing is becoming a critical element in test program decisions regarding limits and flows. This is true for everything from automotive and medical components to complex, heterogeneous... » read more

18 Things Fabless Start-Ups Should Look For In A Yield Management System


Do you work for a fabless start-up? Are you ramping up? If so, you need data-analysis tools for your production data. You will struggle without them. You have two options for yield management analysis. You may decide to hire an engineer (or team of engineers) whose job it is to transfer the data from datalogs to a spreadsheet. Then generate reports. Or, you could invest in a system that takes c... » read more

Auto Chip Reliability Opens Door To Other Industries


Digital chips in the semiconductor industry evolve from each other. Ideas flow into each other over the years, with occasional big leaps in evolution. The term ‘evolution’ fits because one chip evolves to perfectly optimized for one industry niche. But what happens when one industry’s chip becomes a useful for other industries because it is more cost-effective than what is being used i... » read more

Customer Input Guides Tool Development


We’re always looking for high-value items which add to our yield management software without over-complicating or detracting from the core functions. It is an interesting and highly responsible position to be able to take ideas and input from many people, look for common elements in problems and find solutions that can solve many problems. High-value functionality A great example of this ... » read more

Advanced Packaging Makes Testing More Complex


The limits of monolithic integration, together with advances in chip interconnect and packaging technologies, have spurred the growth of heterogeneous advanced packaging where multiple dies are co-packaged using 2.5D and 3D approaches. But this also raises complex test challenges, which are driving new standards and approaches to advanced-package testing. While many of the showstopper issues... » read more

Adopting Yield Analysis Tools


DisplayLink is a fast growing medium-sized semiconductor fabless company from Cambridge UK. We began working with them a few years ago. We caught up with Shane Zhang, Head of Product Engineering to find out why he works with yieldHUB, the problems we solve and the features he likes most. Tell us about DisplayLink. Our operations team is based in Cambridge, UK. We work with teams, suppli... » read more

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