Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
Fabs Reports in recent days have surfaced that Intel will build a fab in an unlikely location—Ohio. Here’s one report on the development. For years, India has tried to develop its own semiconductor...
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Chipmakers Intel has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Tower, a specialty foundry vendor, for approximately $5.4 billion. With the acquisition of Tower, Intel expands its efforts in the...
View ArticleBlog Review: March 16
Ansys’ Peter Hallschmid and Sandra Gely look at why, compared to rain and fog, snow is a different challenging environment for automotive sensors and how the random pattern of snowfall, properties of...
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Extending Copper Interconnects To 2nm
Transistor scaling is reaching a tipping point at 3nm, where nanosheet FETs will likely replace finFETs to meet performance, power, area, and cost (PPAC) goals. A significant architectural change is...
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Highly Selective Etch Rolls Out For Next-Gen Chips
Several etch vendors are starting to ship next-generation selective etch tools, paving the way for new memory and logic devices. Applied Materials was the first vendor to ship a next-gen selective etch...
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Strategies For Faster Yield Ramps On 5nm Chips
Leading chipmakers TSMC and Samsung are producing 5nm devices in high volume production and TSMC is forging ahead with plans for first 3nm silicon by year end. But to meet such aggressive targets,...
View ArticleBlog Review: April 20
Cadence’s Paul McLellan looks at the difference between 3D packaging and 3D integration and the different approaches to system-in-package designs. Siemens’ Spencer Acain finds that despite having less...
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Photomask Shortages Grow At Mature Nodes
A surge in demand for chips at mature nodes, coupled with aging photomask-making equipment at those geometries, are causing significant concern across the supply chain. These issues began to surface...
View ArticleBlog Review: April 27
Siemens’ Joseph Dailey and Jake Wiltgen dispel misunderstandings around safety qualification of software tools and point to some of the safety issues that could lead to schedule delays and additional...
View ArticleAnalog Edge Inference with ReRAM
Abstract “As the demands of big data applications and deep learning continue to rise, the industry is increasingly looking to artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators. Analog in-memory computing...
View ArticleTechnical Paper Round-up: May 3
New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. Technical Paper Research Organizations A Case For Transparent Reliability In DRAM Systems ETH Zurich and TU Delft Analog...
View ArticleWeek In Review: Manufacturing, Test
GlobalFoundries launched GF Labs, an “open framework of internal and external research and development initiatives that deliver a differentiated pipeline of market-driven process technology solutions...
View ArticleWeek In Review: Manufacturing, Test
Broadcom announced it will acquire cloud computing and virtualization company VMware for about $61 billion in cash and stock, and assume $8 billion in VMware net debt. If all goes as planned, the...
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Ways To Address The Materials Crunch
Stellar growth over the last two years and the seemingly insatiable demand for chips, at least through 2025, is sparking massive investment by chip firms — as much as $500B over the next five years....
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Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
Node scaling wars are revving up, although much of the action is happening where most people can’t see it — inside of research labs. This is difficult stuff, which makes delivery dates difficult to...
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Hybrid Bonding Moves Into The Fast Lane
The industry’s unquenchable thirst for I/O density and faster connections between chips, particularly logic and cache memory, is transforming system designs to include 3D architectures, and hybrid...
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How Quickly Can SiC Ramp?
Device makers across the globe are ramping silicon carbide (SiC) manufacturing, with growth set to really take off starting in 2024. It’s been almost five years since Tesla and STMicroelectronics threw...
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How Overlay Keeps Pace With EUV Patterning
Overlay metrology tools improve accuracy while delivering acceptable throughput, addressing competing requirements in increasingly complex devices. In a race that never ends, on-product overlay...
View ArticleWeek In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test
Fallout from the new U.S. export controls continues. Under new regulations, companies looking to supply Chinese chipmakers with advanced manufacturing equipment (<14nm) must first obtain a license...
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Which Foundry Is In The Lead? It Depends.
The multi-billion-dollar race for foundry leadership is becoming more convoluted and complex, making it difficult to determine which company is in the lead at any time because there are so many factors...
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