For several years now, Herb Reiter, eda2asic, and John Ferguson, Mentor Graphics, have been evangelizing about the necessity of assembly design kits (ADK), similar to the process design kits (PDKs) for chip designers, to help drive ecosystem capabilities for what is collectively now being called high density advanced packaging (HDAP), comprising 2.5D IC, 3D IC and high density fan-out wafer... »
Multi-project wafer (MPW) programs have long been considered an economical way to integrate different IC designs from various teams to produce IC design prototypes and low volumes. Because IC fabrication costs are extremely high, it makes sense to share mask and wafer resources in this way. MPWs were historically used for 2D designs, but in 2009, Tezzaron Semiconductor launched an MPW for DARPA to... »
While the rest of the industry anticipates the coming of 3D ICs, and along with it the long anticipated return on investment that goes with it, one small Silicon Valley fabless has been chugging along, already reaping the benefits of interposer integration and 3D IC technologies. I first heard Farhang Yazdani, CEO, BroadPak present during a GSA 3DIC Working Group meeting on 3D IC readiness, and th... »
There’s no doubt left in the minds of semiconductor device manufacturers that the processes required to build interposer-based and 3D IC devices are matured and ready for production. However, the jury is still out in the design community because designing 3D ICs still poses a challenge. Si2 has set out to change that and bring confidence to the minds of chip and system-level designers. Steve Sc... »
Earlier this year, I published an open letter to chip and system-level designers regarding 3D integration, suggesting they consider 3D integration technologies as a solution to dealing with the increasing complexity of SoC designs. The post was inspired by my attendance at the Design and Test Europe (DATE 2014) conference, where I moderated a session on system on chip (SoC) design complexity, and ... »
Moore’s law is approaching physical limitations of CMOS scaling, and three dimensional (3D) integration technologies have been proposed as solutions. Wide band transmission between logic and memory is becoming indispensable for not only mobile products, but also other products related to network systems such as servers and data centers. These days, 3D integration with Through Silicon Vias (T... »
Dear Chip and System-level Designers, Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Françoise von Trapp, and I am known in the semiconductor industry as “The Queen of 3D”. This is because I have held a deep interest in 3D integration technologies, and have devoted the past 7+ years to following the development of the processes involved from proof of concept through to manufacturability, and report... »
The Friday 3D Integration Workshop at DATE 2014 once again found me among friends, as an intimate group of about 30 gathered to spend a day sharing knowledge gained since last year’s workshop. My key take-away for the day was how to achieve reliability and robustness. Jürgen Wolf, director of the Fraunhofer IZM-ASSID 3D integration program stepped in as keynote speaker to replace Yole Développ... »
Thank you, Ann Steffora Mutschler (Semiconductor Engineering) for getting to the bottom of the difference of EDA tools for 2.5D and 3D IC design and test, and providing such a clear explanation in your post, “Evolution vs. Revolution”. In this 2-part post, Mutschler explores the EDA vendor arguments that “tool and design flow changes need to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary.” A... »
To date we at Mentor Graphics have seen a handful of 3D IC design releases, and even more customer evaluations. However, the predominant driver seems to be a desire to understand the space in case their company elects to move into the space. In general, the perception seems to be that the costs for the current offerings are higher than expected. Moreover, many companies are still trying to determi... »
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