Package reliability and qualification continues to evolve with the electronics industry. New electronics applications require new approaches to reliability and qualification. In the past, reliability meant discovering, characterizing and modeling failure mechanisms, and determining their impact on the reliability… Read More
Those of you who have been in the industry for a little while will remember that the recipe for reliable electronics in cars (and other vehicles) used to be simple. Stick to old (like 10 years old) and well-proven processes and tweak rather than tear up and restart well-proven designs to the greatest extent possible. Because incrementing… Read More
One of the most promising advancements in the semiconductor field is the development of 3D Integrated Circuits (3D ICs). 3D ICs enable companies to partition semiconductor designs and seamlessly integrate silicon Intellectual Property (IP) at the most suitable process nodes and processes. This strategic partitioning yields… Read More
In sports, we’re all familiar with how even a team with the best individual players for every role needs to be coordinated as a team to win a championship. In healthcare, a patient is better served with a well-trained primary physician to coordinate with the various medical specialists. The field of semiconductors involves a series… Read More
Spacer-defined patterning is an expected requirement for advanced semiconductor patterning nodes with feature sizes of 25 nm or less. As the required gaps between features go well below the lithography tool’s resolution limit, the use of cut exposures to separate features is used more often, especially in chips produced… Read More
For all the time we spend thinking and talking about silicon design, it’s easy to forget just how important package design is. Semiconductor packages have evolved over the years from very basic containers for ICs into very specialized and highly engineered elements of finished electronic systems. They play an important role … Read More
The use of safety-centric logic design techniques for automotive applications is now widely appreciated, but did you know that similar methods are gaining traction in the design of enterprise-level SSD controllers? In the never-ending optimization of datacenters, a lot attention is being paid to smart storage, offloading… Read More
No area of electronics is moving faster than automotive semiconductors. Everyone has been talking about the increasing electronics content of automobiles for decades. With Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and autonomous driving becoming a reality the pace has picked up even more. These new designs combine just about… Read More
In an ANSYS seminar held at DesignCon 2019, Dr. Larry Williams, ANSYS Director of Technology, outlined how 5G design innovation can be accelerated through simulation. He posited that 5G will become a general-purpose technology that affects an entire economy, drastically alter societies and unleash a cascade of complementary… Read More
In conjunction with the 2018 International Test Conference, Mentor has several interesting test announcements. They also have a busy round of technical activities, including a number of technical papers, presentations, tutorials and a poster from a major customer about using Mentor. I’d like to touch on the two product related… Read More
