Category: Semiconductor
Semiconductor/IC
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Turning InGaAs on its Head
InGaAs is one of the new wunderkind semiconductors, favored for high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) and for optical designs (more about that in a future post). But,…
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Faster Extraction from Cadence
Cadence recently announced new extraction tools, claiming both greater speed (5x) and best-in-class accuracy for full-chip extraction. And what is it that lets them speed…
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A New 3D
3D has been tossed about quite a bit over the last few years. We can ignore the 3D TV craze that came and went like…
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Old-School Analog Outputs
Today we looked at the role of Freescale’s new FXLN83xxQ accelerometer for analyzing vibrations. But one feature of the accelerometer had me cocking an eyebrow:…
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A HEMT Cool-Down
Heat has got to be one of the most annoying side-effects of doing useful electrical work. The more work we do, the more things heat…
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In-Situ Real-Time Process Checks
Yesterday we looked at number of different ways of inspecting wafers. Such inspections can be an important part of a process that turns out high…
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Anything But Moore’s Law
Any new foundry would want to grow up to be a megalith like TSMC, right? Isn’t that how you prove you’ve “made it”? Well, not…
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Planning PCB, Package, and Die Together
Silicon chips and the packages that house them have been steadily drawing closer to each other over the years. There are so many pins on…
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TSVs: Like Vias, Only 1000X Deeper
We recently looked at Applied Materials’ solution to the challenges of lining small vias: using cobalt. But those are through-dielectric vias. What about through-silicon vias…