//php echo do_shortcode(‘[responsivevoice_button voice=”US English Male” buttontext=”Listen to Post”]’) ?>

The semiconductor sector is seeing a new wave of expansion. While there has never been a greater demand for chip innovation, Moore’s Law 2D scaling is stalling. With each successive iteration, chip shrinking takes longer and costs more. As chipmakers and systems strive to continue driving advancements in power, performance, area, cost, and speed to market, new design and production paradigms are required.

The next revolution in advanced packaging provides a major improvement over conventional multi–chip packaging techniques, with the substrate’s wiring used to complete the electrical interconnections between chips. Each successive technology offers higher I/O density, as well as lower power consumption per bit of data transfer. Nirmalya Maity, corporate vice president of Advanced Packaging at Applied Materials, writes in this special project how to accelerate the trend through advanced packaging techniques.

Applied Novel Devices (AND), a provider of new semiconductor device architectures applicable to discrete and integrated power devices, has introduced a major industry breakthrough with its new class of silicon power MOSFET (ANDFET) technology, which features a sub–30–µm substrate that offers significant benefits for fast–switching and power–conversion applications.

Meanwhile, silicon photonics is evolving from a technology reserved for niche markets, such as high–performance computing or military applications, to an accessible technology for higher–volume markets, including the consumer one. Designed to address growing bandwidth demands and high–level applications that rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning, the next silicon photonics platforms are ready for the market.

The modular architecture of photonic chips simplifies the design, fabrication, and integration of quantum and other optoelectronic solutions. The forthcoming architectures’ modularity, speed, and room–temperature operation will enable photonics to contribute to the rapid construction of quantum computers.

Here’s an excerpt from Ed Seng, strategic marketing manager for Advanced Digital at Teradyne, in which he examines a post–Moore’s Law world:

“Even in a post–Moore’s law world, semiconductor technology continues to advance, seeking to yield improvements and pivoting into new technical directions, such as the advanced packaging of multiple heterogenous integrated semiconductor dies, or chiplets. The result is new manufacturing processes that add complexity and defectivity — making test a key component for success.

Advanced packaging continues the benefits of Moo