Semiconductor Latest News

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Electrostatic Discharge vs Electromigration

ESD

This is a guest post by Naman Gupta, a Static Timing Analysis (STA) engineer at a leading semiconductor company in India.

Electrostatic Discharge and Electromigration might sound similar, but refer to two different physical phenomena. Let’s take them up one by one.
 
Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) is the large current flow between any

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Foundry Ranking by Capacity 2013-2014

Each year, top foundries are ranked by their sales, and you probably don’t need the table below to know who’s first.
But what if we look at the top foundries from the capacity angle? Each of the top foundries holds several production lines that address different technology nodes and wafer

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Lock-Up Latch: Implication on Timing

This is a guest post by Naman Gupta, a Static Timing Analysis (STA) engineer at a leading semiconductor company in India.

 
Lock-Up Latches are important elements for STA engineer while closing timing on their DFT Modes: particularly the hold timing closure of the Shift Mode. While shifting, the scan chains

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MLM wafer and mask costs – free calculator

mlm wafer calculator

Maskset cost is becoming one of the major expenses to the overall NRE cost of ASIC projects, particularly with advanced technology nodes. For projects targeting low volume production the maskset cost is a financial barrier to a profitable and solid business.
Taping out using MLM instead of a full maskset

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Why Dr. Morris Chang is not My Hero. A tribute to Failure Analysis Engineers

Failure analysis

 
Dr. Morris Chang is not my hero. He might be the most important person in the semiconductor industry in our lifetime, but he is not my hero. I have nothing against him. I’ve never met him and probably will never will. Instead, I meet my heroes usually after tape-out,

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What Is Latch Up and How to Test It

Latch up

Simply defined, Latch-Up in VLSI is a functional chip failure associated with excessive current going through the chip, caused by weak circuit design. In some cases Latch-Up can be a temporary condition that can be resolved by power cycle, but unfortunately it can also cause a fatal chip failure.
 
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How to find the right ASIC service providers for your project

find asic vendors

How many ASIC service providers are typically included in a shortlist when launching a project?
We’d argue that too few.
 
There are over 2000 ASIC service providers worldwide that provide a range of services – ASIC design, verification, validation, packaging, testing, or supply chain solutions, which combine multiple services.

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Semiconductor Technology Nodes – History, Trends and Forecast

Semiconductor foundries claim they release a new technology node every two years. They may be off by a year or two, but on the whole, this is quite impressive, no doubt. Come to think of it, I don’t believe many of us even change our mobile phone every two years. How

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ASIC Prototyping – Should you purchase Boards or DIY?

ASIC board

With the increased complexity of SoC designs, high tapeout prices and shrinking time-to-market, ASIC Prototyping has become a key step in ASIC projects. FPGA development boards are being used more often to verify ASIC design, test hardware and software integration, and provide a proof of concept demonstration to potential customers

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Is TSMC going to smash IC Packaging Houses?

crush

Two years ago TSMC announced its plans to expand into IC  packaging services.  It is unclear how much these plans succeeded up till now, but it definitely seems that TSMC is now in an excellent position to take a big bite into the advanced IC packaging market, enter into direct competition

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