Clik here to view.
Tech Talk: 2.5D Issues
Bill Isaacson, director of ASIC marketing at eSilicon, about how viable this packaging approach is, organic vs. inorganic interposers, where the problems are, thermal coupling, interposer cost, and...
View ArticlePredictions For 2016: Tools and Flows
Seventeen companies sent in their predictions for this year with some of them sending predictions from several people. This is in addition to the CEO predictions that were recently published. That is a...
View ArticleAre Chips Getting More Reliable?
Reliability is emerging as a key metric in the semiconductor industry, alongside of power, performance and cost, but it also is becoming harder to measure and increasingly difficult to achieve. Most...
View ArticleDevice Adequateness
There is a growing chorus of people who are saying that 2016 will be, quite frankly, a boring technology year. They talk about no new or exciting products coming along. They talk about a lack of...
View ArticleFallout From Scaling
By Ed Sperling & Ann Steffora Mutschler Semiconductor scaling is becoming much more difficult and expensive at each new node, creating sharp divisions about what path to take next for which markets...
View ArticleThermal Damage To Chips Widens
Heat is becoming a much bigger problem for semiconductor and system design, fueled by higher density and the increasing use of complex chips in markets such as automotive, where reliability is measured...
View ArticleWill 3D-IC Work?
Advanced packaging is becoming real on every level, from fan-outs to advanced fan-outs, 2.5D, and 3D-ICs for memory. But just how far 3D and monolithic 3D will go isn’t clear at this point. The reason...
View ArticleInside Advanced Packaging
Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced IC-packaging, the OSAT industry, China and other topics with Ron Huemoeller, vice president of worldwide R&D at Amkor. What follows are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Healthy Is The Chip Market?
By Ed Sperling & Ann Steffora Mutschler The inclusion of semiconductors in more products across more market segments—many of which historically have not been large consumers of chips—is having a...
View ArticleRacing To Design Chips Faster
A sweeping shift is underway to develop chips for more narrowly defined market segments in much smaller production runs. Rather than focusing on shrinking features and reducing cost per transistor by...
View ArticleIs 2.5D Cheaper?
For the past several years, as 2.5D was being tested, the most common response from chipmakers and tools vendors was that the interposer used to connect various die in a package was far too expensive....
View ArticleNew Memory Approaches And Issues
New memory types and approaches are being developed and tested as DRAM and Moore’s Law both run out of steam, adding greatly to the confusion of what comes next and how that will affect chip designs....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Timing Is Everything
It’s easy to look back on companies or products that missed the market because they were too early. Remember the Eo? The brick-like personal digital assistant that AT&T introduced in 1993 had an...
View ArticleHow Many Cores?
New chip architectures and new packaging options—including fan-outs and 2.5D—are changing basic design considerations for how many cores are needed, what they are used for, and how to solve some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tech Talk: 2.5D Issues
Bill Isaacson, director of ASIC marketing at eSilicon, about how viable this packaging approach is, organic vs. inorganic interposers, where the problems are, thermal coupling, interposer cost, and...
View ArticleSilexica: Multicore Software Automation
Multicore programming has a long and troubled history, and it has become much worse as the computing world moves increasingly toward heterogeneous multicore architectures. While it’s easy enough to map...
View Article2.5D Becomes A Reality
Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss 2.5D and advanced packaging with Max Min, senior technical manager at Samsung; Rob Aitken, an ARM fellow; John Shin, vice president at Marvell; Bill...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Power Management Heats Up
Power management has been talked about a lot recently, especially when it comes to mobile devices. But power is only a part of the issue—and perhaps not even the most important part. Heat is the...
View ArticleFoundries Expand Their Scope
By Ed Sperling & Mark LaPedus Major foundries are stepping up their offerings across a wide swath of technology nodes, specialty processes and advanced packaging—a recognition that end markets are...
View Article10nm Versus 7nm
The silicon foundry business is heating up, as vendors continue to ramp their 16nm/14nm finFET processes. At the same time, they are racing each other to ship the next technologies on the roadmap—10nm...
View Article