Jeff Wilson of Mentor Graphics writes that, in IC design, we’re currently seeing the makings of a perfect storm when it comes to the growing complexity of fill. The driving factors contributing to the growth of this storm are the shrinking feature sizes and spacing requirements between fill shapes, new manufacturing processes that use fill to meet uniformity requirements, and larger design sizes that require more fill.
Is 3D NAND a Disruptive Technology for Flash Storage? Absolutely! That’s the view of Dr. Er-Xuan Ping of Applied Materials. He said a panel at the 2014 Flash Memory Summit agreed that 3D NAND will be the most viable storage technology in the years to come, although our opinions were mixed on when that disruption would be evident.
Phil Garrou takes a look at some of the “Fan Out” papers that were presented at the 2014 ECTC, focusing on STATSChipPAC (SCP) and the totally encapsulated WLP, Siliconware (SPIL) panel fan-out packaging (P-FO), Nanium’s eWLB Dielectric Selection, and an electronics contact lens for diabetics from Google/Novartis.
Ed Koczynski says he now knows how wafers feel when moving through a fab. Leti in Grenoble, France does so much technology integration that in 2010 it opened a custom-developed people-mover to integrate cleanrooms (“Salles Blanches” in French) it calls a Liaison Blanc-Blanc (LBB) so workers can remain in bunny-suits while moving batches of wafers between buildings.
Handel Jones of IBS provides a study titled “How FD-SOI will Enable Innovation and Growth in Mobile Platform Sales” that concludes that the benefits of FD-SOI are overwhelming for mobile platforms through Q4/2017 based on a number of key metrics.
Gabe Moretti of Chip Design blogs that a grown industry looks at the future, not just to short term income. EDA is demonstrating to be such an industry with significant participation by its members to foster and support the education of its future developers and users through educational licenses and other projects that foster education.
