Semiconductor Engineering

Semiconductor Engineering was established by a diverse group of chip designers, engineers, journalists, users, industry organizations, and standards groups to offer valuable insights into the intricate processes of semiconductor design, testing, verification, integration, and manufacturing, as well as the market trends that drive these activities. The aim of this platform is to deliver practical, independently created content through focused monthly newsletters, weekly updates, timely news alerts, videos, independent research, and a forum for discussion and inquiry. Although the site is backed by sponsors, the content produced by our team adheres to the highest standards of journalistic integrity and impartiality. All articles are professionally crafted and vetted by independent journalists and engineers who possess extensive industry expertise, with vendor participation limited to offering insights rather than promoting their products. Founded in 2008, Sperling Media Group LLC focuses on providing a transparent flow of unbiased information concerning technology and business matters in specialized yet demanding markets. In an era of increasing complexity, where genuine insights are crucial, the availability of independent information sources is dwindling.

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Physics Limits Interposer Line Lengths

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Bryon Moyer

Electrical interposers provide a convenient surface for mounting multiple chips within a single package, but even though interposer lines theoretically can be routed anywhere, insertion losses limit their practical length. Lines on interposers — and on silicon interposers in particular — can be exceedingly narrow. Having a small cross-section makes such lines resistive, degrading signals the farther they travel.
Power Delivery Challenges For AI Chips

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Gregory Haley

As artificial intelligence (AI) workloads grow larger and more complex, the various processing elements being developed to process all that data are demanding unprecedented levels of power. But delivering this power efficiently and reliably, without degrading signal integrity or introducing thermal bottlenecks, has created some of the toughest design and manufacturing challenges in semiconductor history.
Can You Build A Known-Good Multi-Die System?

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Ed Sperling

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the challenges of designing and testing multi-die systems, including how to ensure they will work as expected, with Bill Mullen, Ansys fellow; John Ferguson, senior director of product management at Siemens EDA; Chris Mueth, senior director of new markets and strategic initiatives at Keysight; Albert Zeng, senior engineering group director at Cadence; Anand Thiruvengadam, senior director and head of AI product management at Synopsys.
Blog Review: June 18

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Jesse Allen

Synopsys’ John Koeter and other industry experts discuss whether high-bandwidth memory should follow established standards for broad compatibility and scalability or be customized to address specific use case requirements and time-to-market targets. In a podcast, Siemens’ Conor Peick, Dale Tutt, and Mike Ellow chat about how progress in 3D-IC development, thermal management, and the industrial metaverse marks a paradigm shift for EDA and other engineering software tools.
Research Bits: June 17

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Jesse Allen

Superlattice castellated FETsResearchers from the University of Bristol and Northrop Grumman Mission Systems discovered a latch-effect in gallium nitride (GaN) that could lead to improved radio frequency device performance, crucial for enabling 6G devices. “We have piloted a device technology, working with collaborators, called superlattice castellated field effect transistors (SLCFETs), in which more than 1000 fins with sub-100 nm width help drive the current.
Baya Systems: Moving Data Faster

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Ed Sperling |Emma Riverso

Moving data is one of the big challenges in the AI world. There is so much data being generated that even moving it back and forth from processors to memories requires a significant amount of power, enormous bandwidth, and frequently causes delays that can bog down performance. Now, with substantially more processing, different types of processors on each system on chip (SoC), and the emerging chiplet paradigm, the problem is growing exponentially.
LLMs On The Edge

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Ed Sperling

Home > Low Power-High Performance > LLMs On The Edge What’s needed to utilize advances in AI in small devices. Nearly all the data input for AI so far has been text, but that’s about to change.
Photomask Changes And Challenges At Mature And Advanced Nodes

1 week ago | semiengineering.com | Gregory Haley

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the current state and future direction of mask-making, with Harry Levinson, principal lithographer at HJL Lithography; Aki Fujimura, CEO of D2S; Ezequiel Russell, senior director of mask technology at Micron; and Christopher Progler, executive vice president and CTO at Photronics. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To view part one of this discussion, click here.
The Best DRAMs For AI

2 weeks ago | semiengineering.com | Bryon Moyer

Artificial intelligence (AI) involves intense computing and tons of data. The computing may be performed by CPUs, GPUs, or dedicated accelerators, and while the data travels through DRAM on its way to the processor, the best DRAM type for this purpose depends on the type of system that is performing the training or inference.
High Data Quality Needed To Better Utilize Fab Data Streams

2 weeks ago | semiengineering.com | Anne Meixner

Fab operations have had big data management issues for decades. Standards help, but only if sufficient attention to detail is taken during collection. Semiconductor wafer manufacturing represents one of the most complex manufacturing processes in the world. With each generation of process improvement comes more sophisticated fab equipment, new process recipes, and exponential increases in measurement and operational data.