| Françoise in 3D |
May. 17, 2012
In the May 15 issue of Future Fab News!, Aaron Hand, contributing editor, asked for opinions on Mark Bohr’s (Intel) now famous EE Times interview, with Rick Merritt, where he said the fabless model is collapsing and a return to the IDM is inevitable. (I addressed a similar topic a year ago in a post titled Will 3D Integration Keep 2nd Tier Foundries Alive?) So for what it’s worth, here’s m Read More>>
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| From Different Dimensions |
Apr. 11, 2012
I couldn't have written it better myself, so in the essence of time and to avoid redundancy, i'm re-posting this blog post from Richard Goering of Cadence, on the Panel Discussion at last week's EDPS:
It's time to get to work if we want to bring 3D-ICs with through-silicon vias (TSVs) into the semiconductor design mainstream. What ecosystem support is needed in the short term, medium term, and lo Read More>>
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There has been enough interest stirred up in R&D around glass as a low-cost alternative interposer substrate material compared with silicon, that there was an entire session dedicated to developments in that area at the 2012 IMAPS International Device Packaging conference, held March 5-8 in Scottsdale, AZ.
Rao Tummala, of Georgia Tech’s 3D Packaging Center, started things off, touting the Read More>>
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Last week, CEA-Leti launched its Open 3D initiative to the 3D world in an effort to make its mature 3D technologies accessible to industrial and academic partners for their advanced products and research projects. Wanting to learn more about this offer than was detailed in the press release, I interviewed Leti’s David Henry, Open 3D project manager. He not only provided answers to my questions, he Read More>>
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Earlier this week, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. announced it had “developed the world's first fully automated 12-inch (300 millimeters) wafer bonding machine, capable of producing 3-dimensionally integrated LSI (large-scale integration) circuits at room temperature.” This tool is targeted to the MEMS, 3D LSI's, and the RF market.
I was skeptical of the words “world’s first” when I know Read More>>
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At RTI’s 3D ASIP last week, I sat down with Paul Enquist, of Ziptronix, to get an update on the company’s progress with its direct bonding technologies. Paul presented on Day 2 of the conference, but honored me with a one-on-one explanation on the application space enabled by the company’s two proprietary processes, Zibond and Direct Bond Interconnect (DBI). Zibond is the direct oxide bond Read More>>
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The supply chain business model for manufacturing 3D stacked ICS has caused perhaps one of the hottest debates so far in commercializing 3D semiconductor processes. It’s easy to see why. Beyond the rather obvious question of who will own the liability of damaged devices, there’s a good deal of revenue at stake for those who make the investment in adding capacity for middle end of the line (MEOL) Read More>>
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