At SEMICON West and Intersolar North America last week in San Francisco, crossing guards danced to keep the throngs away from the vehicles at the corner of 4th and Howard, as many people flowed back and forth between the shows co-located across 4th Street from each other. SEMICON West, down ~30% in size from last […]
Leaving California for the first time, the 12th annual IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC) will take place in Sapporo, Japan, June 1-3. With lithographic shrinks in 2D dimensions slowing, interconnects between chips in packages and in 3D stacks will be the driver for increased density and functionality in ICs. Thus, the more than 80 […]
Thermal management of advanced ICs remains challenging, with models often failing to predict the heat flow through multiple films and interfaces. Advanced Thermal Solutions (ATS) of Norwood, Massachusetts (US) will provide a half-day of free, no-obligation use of its unique Thermal Characterization Laboratory to engineers who need to perform thermal testing of their heat sinks, […]
Silicon Valley has certainly not been immune to the current economic conditions, with many companies announcing multiple rounds of layoffs and moving operations overseas. Yet for many it is still considered “the heart” of the high-tech industry. At today’s well-attended Silicon Valley Lunch Forum, organized by the Sales and Marketing Council of SEMI, three speakers […]
IMEC has successfully transferred memory variability aware modeling (MemoryVAM), the first EDA tool for statistical memory analysis, to Samsung Electronics. The tool predicts yield loss of embedded SRAMs caused by the process variations of deep-submicron IC technologies. This may be the first proven design-for-manufacturing (DFM) tool to provide statistical analysis across degrees of abstraction from […]
Intermolecular, the combinatorial R&D company that has been working on semiconductor fab processes, plans to grow solar R&D to possibly be the largest portion of the company’s business. Under the leadership of new vice president and general manager of solar business group Craig Hunter (who joined from Applied Materials), Intermolecular is now working on both […]
IMEC has begun expanding its beautiful Leuven, Belgium campus facilities, starting with 2,800 square-meters of research labs and including the extension of its state-of-the-art clean room. With this extension, IMEC will expand its research on 22nm CMOS and beyond, low-cost and high-efficiency solar cells, and biomedical electronics. The Flemish Government invests 35 million euro and […]
Mentor Graphics has announced new capabilities to the Calibre(R) platform to allow designers to control thickness variability due to Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) at advanced process nodes. Designers can transition from dummy fill to density-based fill, or to full model-based fill, depending on the demands of their designs and target manufacturing process. The new capability […]
Wright Williams & Kelly (WWK), the cost and productivity modeling company, is now providing free general information in an electronic newsletter, and has lowered the cost to start using it’s flagship TWO COOL(R) cost of ownership (CoO) modeling software. The company’s “Applied Cost Modeling” newsletter features free excerpts from the book “Hi-Tech Equipment Reliability: A […]
SVTC Technologies has been busy announcing new business directions ever since Joe Bronson stepped in as CEO at the beginning of this year. Last month it announced a partnership with Entrepix to provide 300 mm chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) development and production services for customers who use the Tool Access Program (TAP) at the SVTC […]