Semiconductor manufacturers 'to tackle chip production problems'

e14news — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 01:20:13 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by e14news on 10/7/2021 1:20:13 AM
Three major European semiconductor manufacturers have formed an alliance to tackle some of the problems facing the silicon chip industry.

Infineon, NXP Semiconductors and STMicroelectronics met to discuss issues such as circuit detail resolutions falling to 65 and 45 mm  which is becoming increasingly common.

Although chip designs often pass traditional checks, when they are manufactured in silicon these hurdles defeat them.

Teams are then forced to implement expensive repair methods or discard the chip altogether.

This also means that designers can be forced to compromise on performance levels because of physical weakness in the production or design verification stages.

Project leader Philippe Garcin, from STMicroelectronics, said: "Our most important target was to favour 'first silicon success' without affecting the performance of the circuits."

In related news, Lattice Semiconductor Corporation and Beyond Semiconductor recently announced an alliance to develop complier tools for the former's soft processors.