There is no shortage of topics for someone writing about sustainability in May. April went from having Earth Day to being earth month, with sustainability press releases on nearly a daily basis. A significant number of companies use April and May as their release dates for company responsibility reports with...
The photo of my May calendar was a picture of a 1956 RAMAC computer with a whopping five megabytes of storage. The note on my calendar states that it could hold the entire phone book of Manhattan. The photo made me think of recent technology announcements, the announcements yet to...
As Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank failures were happening, I read a Facebook post that commented, 1929 again? I then started thinking about the number of bank and industry crashes that have taken place over time, and closer to home during my career. 1929 sticks with many of...
There are multiple challenges facing the semiconductor industry as multiple new fabs launch across the United States. A key one is where they are going to get the semiconductor workforce needed to fully staff and operate them. One challenge is getting students excited again about designing and manufacturing semiconductors. A...
The semiconductor and microelectronics industries are in the midst of a workforce crisis created by, among other things, the combination of explosive growth and a maturing workforce. Competition for STEM talent in other industries has made it difficult to recruit the latest generation of graduates, who are lured by seemingly...
For the first time in 3D InCites’ history, I was invited to attend a TSMC Technology Symposium, which took place April 26 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. You might be asking, why was this my first time? Great question! I always assumed it was because Herb Reiter, our EDA...
14 years ago, I had an idea to create a content platform devoted to the advancement of semiconductor 3D Integration technologies. I called it 3D InCites because to “incite” means to “stir up interest in”. I also liked the play on 3D IC. I started attending industry events and blogging...
The donations are in, the expenses tallied, and we’re excited to report that the 3D InCites DEI Fund has grown to a healthy $61,672.52 thanks to the generosity of our 2023 3D InCites Awards sponsors, our annual Mural Sponsors, and our second annual Hike for DEI, and our event partners,...
SEMI and TechSearch International announced that the global semiconductor packaging materials market is expected to reach US$29.8 billion by 2027, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.7% from the US$26.1 billion in revenue it logged in 2022, in their new Global Semiconductor Packaging Materials Outlook report. High-performance applications, 5G, artificial intelligence...
The idea of semiconductor manufacturing becoming a trillion-dollar industry is astounding, exciting, or worrisome, depending on your viewpoint. Growth in the sector will provide jobs and create products that will make life better for millions of people. But the more chips we make, the higher the environmental impact of their...
The semiconductor industry’s decades-long adherence to Moore’s Law doctrine of doubling transistor counts on monolithic devices every 18 – 24 months has been amazingly successful. It’s now possible to integrate tens of billions of transistors onto a monolithic die whose area may be hundreds of square millimeters. The resulting chips...
Cadence, ASE Group, and Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU) announced collaboration on an education and training program to cultivate talent for 3D-IC Design. Cadence collaborates with universities on system packaging education and talent development through the Cadence Academic Network program, which provides students with access to Cadence advanced IC packaging...
TSMC and the CHIPS & Science Act I think it would be fair to say that most of us thought that TSMC would be getting their share of the CHIPS Act monies (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) to offset the costs of building its US fab/fabs in Arizona. However,...
While most of us in advanced packaging is familiar with CEA-Leti, CEA-List ( Laboratoire d’Intégration de Systèmes et des technologies) is one of three specialized technological research institutes of CEA specializing in digital systems. Denis Dutoit, of CEA-List, presentation on “Chiplet Partitioning Can Balance Among Performance, Flexibility and Scalability” at...
IFTLE has been updating our readers on the chiplet market and the technology since I served as subject matter expert (SME) for DARPA’s Dan Green who gets credit for developing the CHIPS program (Common Heterogeneous Integration and IP Reuse Strategies) in 2017. At that time the average packaging engineer couldn’t...
In a recent report, Semianalysis examines the migration from planar to finFET to nanosheet to complementary FET to 2D transistor designs. Since IFTLE has always preached that one must understand where IC transistor technology is going in order to be able to predict advanced packaging changes, this report is certainly...
The CHIPS and Science Act aims to bring semiconductor research & development and manufacturing back to U.S. soil. Not only will this make the U.S. less reliant on the international supply chain, but it is estimated that this investment in onshore semiconductor and research facilities will create over half a...
I attended my first SEMI Foundation-organized Women in Semiconductors (WIS) event on May 1st. It was held in conjunction with the Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC) in Saratoga Springs, NY. I really didn’t know what to expect but I know I wasn’t expecting standing-room-only with 200 people attending. The other...
Until recently, many companies considered diversity a “nice to have.” Companies supported diversity and inclusion because they wanted to be good citizens because it was the right thing to do, and – for some, cynically – because it was good PR. But now research is proving the business case for...
An open letter to David Benjamin, EE Times Dear David, You really don’t get it. Why? Why, when more women are joining the microelectronics industry in technical and non-technical roles, would you resort to female stereotypes from the 1950s as a vehicle to discuss such an important topic as global...