3,822 technical terms and definitions
post silicon era, what is post silicon era, beyond silicon, post-silicon computing, carbon electronics, spintronics, 2d semiconductors, quantum computing
The post-silicon era denotes the transformative paradigm shift in solid-state physics, materials science, and computer architecture where classical bulk silicon (Si) is superseded…
packaging
Pot is the reservoir section in transfer molding where preheated compound is loaded before being pushed into runner channels - its geometry and thermal behavior influence compound…
ir drop, power grid, power integrity, pdn analysis
Power Distribution Networks and on-chip power grid architectures constitute the physical and electrical infrastructure engineered to deliver stable supply voltages and ground…
chip power, gpu power, dynamic power, static power, tdp, datacenter power
Power consumption is the rate at which a chip, board, rack, or facility draws electrical energy, measured in watts. Power sets performance, cooling, packaging, reliability, rack…
power delivery for chiplet systems and decoupling placement, power delivery chiplet, delivery chiplet systems, chiplet systems decoupling, systems decoupling placement
Power Delivery for Chiplet Systems and Decoupling Placement Introduction & Motivation Power Delivery for Chiplet Systems and Decoupling Placement addresses a central problem…
pdn, chip power network, power distribution, power grid impedance
Power Distribution Networks and on-chip power grid architectures constitute the physical and electrical infrastructure engineered to deliver stable supply voltages and ground…
PDN, on-chip power grid, decap, voltage regulation module
Power Distribution Networks and on-chip power grid architectures constitute the physical and electrical infrastructure engineered to deliver stable supply voltages and ground…
power converter, power semiconductor switching, energy conversion, power electronic system
Power electronics. converts, conditions and controls electrical energy with semiconductor devices operated mainly as switches. Instead of dissipating excess voltage like a linear…
ir drop analysis, power grid design, decoupling capacitor placement, em electromigration power
Power Distribution Networks and on-chip power grid architectures constitute the physical and electrical infrastructure engineered to deliver stable supply voltages and ground…
pmic architecture, voltage regulator topology, power converter efficiency, battery management semiconductor
Power Management IC (PMIC) Design — Voltage Regulation and Energy Conversion Architectures Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs) regulate, convert, and distribute…
pmic voltage regulator, ldo regulator design, dc dc buck converter, on chip power management
Power Management IC (PMIC) Design is the analog/mixed-signal discipline that creates the voltage regulators, power sequencers, battery chargers, and power-good monitors required…
trench gate mosfet process, body region power mos, drift region doping, power device threshold voltage
Power MOSFET is the transistor optimized not for logic switching speed but for efficiently conducting large currents (1–1000 A) at high voltages (20–1200 V) with minimal…
power semiconductor fabrication, vertical mosfet structure, igbt manufacturing, superjunction mosfet
Power MOSFET Trench Process Technology is the specialized semiconductor manufacturing flow that creates vertical transistor structures capable of switching tens to hundreds…
power MOSFET IGBT, SiC GaN wide bandgap, breakdown field thermal conductivity, Schottky diode power, thyristor SCR grid, EV inverter device selection, switching frequency voltage tradeoff
Power semiconductors are devices purpose-built to handle high voltage — roughly 100 volts up to 10 kilovolts — and high current, from single-digit amps up into the thousands…
igbt, power mosfet, sic power, gan power device
Wide bandgap (WBG) power semiconductors, gallium nitride (GaN) High-Electron-Mobility Transistors (HEMT), and silicon carbide (4H-SiC) power MOSFETs constitute the foundational…
igbt power module, silicon carbide mosfet, wide bandgap power, power conversion semiconductor
Wide bandgap (WBG) power semiconductors, gallium nitride (GaN) High-Electron-Mobility Transistors (HEMT), and silicon carbide (4H-SiC) power MOSFETs constitute the foundational…
silicon carbide ev, igbt ev traction, wide bandgap power switch, ev inverter efficiency
Wide bandgap (WBG) power semiconductors, gallium nitride (GaN) High-Electron-Mobility Transistors (HEMT), and silicon carbide (4H-SiC) power MOSFETs constitute the foundational…
DBC direct bonded copper substrate, parasitic inductance switching, thermal cycling fatigue, traction inverter module, electrical thermal co-optimization, bond wire solder joint reliability
A power semiconductor module is an integrated package platform that combines power die, substrates, and cooling paths together into a single assembled unit specifically engineered…
sic jfet cascode, sic gate oxide reliability, sic body diode, sic power module assembly
Wide bandgap (WBG) power semiconductors, gallium nitride (GaN) High-Electron-Mobility Transistors (HEMT), and silicon carbide (4H-SiC) power MOSFETs constitute the foundational…
psd, metrology
PSD (Power Spectral Density) analysis is a frequency-domain technique for characterizing surface roughness — decomposing the surface height profile into its spectral components…
power performance area, ppa optimization, design tradeoff, pareto frontier chip design, dvfs
PPA — Power, Performance, Area — is the three-axis scoreboard every chip design decision ultimately gets measured against. Every knob a design team can turn — transistor sizing…
pmd deposition, undoped silicate glass, harp flowable cvd, hsp pmd gapfill, pmd planarization cmp
Pre-Metal Dielectric (PMD) Gap Fill is the deposition and planarization of a low-defect silicon dioxide layer between tungsten contact plugs — typically using undoped silicate…
metrology
Precision, in metrology, measures how tightly repeated measurements of the same feature agree with each other — a question entirely separate from whether those measurements are…
thin film precursor, thin film deposition precursor, semiconductor deposition precursor, precursor selection, precursor properties, precursor decomposition, cvd precursor, ald precursor, deposition chemistry, precursor qualification, cvd
A thin-film precursor is a chemical source molecule that transports one or more film-forming elements to a substrate, where heat, plasma, light, or a coreactant converts it into…
predictive maintenance systems semiconductor manufacturing, predictive maintenance, systems semiconductor manufacturing, mfc ml rf rul, predictive maintenance systems
Predictive Maintenance Systems in Semiconductor Manufacturing Introduction & Motivation Predictive Maintenance (PdM) leverages machine learning and sensor telemetry to forecast…
metrology
Spectroscopic ellipsometry and inline optical wafer metrology constitute the non-destructive physical measurement and defect detection disciplines that govern yield control across…
hardware data prefetcher, cache prefetching algorithms, memory latency hiding, stride prefetcher spatial locality
Hardware Data Prefetching is the hyper-aggressive, predictive architectural hardware mechanism embedded in all modern high-performance microprocessors that actively guesses which…
packaging
Pressure sensor packaging is the specialized packaging design that protects pressure-sensing elements while preserving controlled media access and calibration stability - it…
production, random defects, systematic defects, edge die yield loss, design marginality, wafer mapping, yield trend monitoring, fab health indicator, test economics
Probe yield is the percentage of die on a wafer that pass electrical test at wafer probe — the very first point in manufacturing where a die's actual functional quality gets…
semiconductor process history
A process node designates a semiconductor technology generation, historically tied to minimum feature size but now primarily a marketing designation reflecting transistor density…
drop in cell, ring oscillator speed measurement, wafer level acceptance gating, sample wafer measurement, SPC control chart, earliest process indicator, measurement flow
Process control monitor structures sit in the scribe lines between dies, as well as sometimes in drop-in cells scattered between functional blocks within the die itself, and their…
stress management cmos, film stress engineering, wafer warpage control, residual stress effects
Process-Induced Stress Management — Process-induced mechanical stress in CMOS fabrication arises from thermal mismatch, intrinsic film stress, and phase transformations during…
residual stress cmos, film stress wafer bow, stress-induced overlay error, stress compensation processing
Process-Induced Stress Management is the discipline of controlling, compensating, and exploiting residual mechanical stresses generated during semiconductor fabrication—including…
metrology
Spectroscopic ellipsometry and inline optical wafer metrology constitute the non-destructive physical measurement and defect detection disciplines that govern yield control across…
semiconductor process control, spc, statistical process control, sensor data, fault detection, run-to-run control, process optimization
Semiconductor Manufacturing Process Parameters Monitoring: Mathematical Modeling 1. The Fundamental Challenge Modern semiconductor fabrication involves 500–1000+ sequential…
process node roadmap, semiconductor node, nanometer node, tsmc node, intel node, 3nm 2nm 1nm
Semiconductor Process Nodes are the generational labels used to describe successive advances in chip manufacturing technology, originally representing a physical feature size…
lot to lot variation, wafer to wafer variation, within wafer variation, process sigma
Process Variation is the inevitable deviation of physical dimensions, film thicknesses, doping concentrations, and other parameters from their target values during manufacturing…
lot to lot variation, wafer to wafer variation, within wafer variation, process sigma, pvt variation
Process variation is the unavoidable statistical fluctuation in transistor and interconnect parameters that occurs during semiconductor manufacturing — no two transistors on…
process variation modeling, corner analysis, statistical variation, on chip variation ocv, systematic random variation
Process variation is the unavoidable statistical fluctuation in transistor and interconnect parameters that occurs during semiconductor manufacturing — no two transistors on…
corner analysis pvt, statistical process variation, within die variation, lot to lot wafer wafer variation
Semiconductor Process Variation is the unavoidable manufacturing phenomenon where device and interconnect parameters (threshold voltage, channel length, oxide thickness, metal…
wafer level variation, lot to lot variation, within die variation, systematic random variation
Process Variation in Semiconductor Manufacturing is the inherent variability in every fabrication step — lithography CD, film thickness, doping concentration, etch depth, CMP…
systematic random variation, opc model calibration, advanced process control apc, virtual metrology prediction
Spectroscopic ellipsometry and inline optical wafer metrology constitute the non-destructive physical measurement and defect detection disciplines that govern yield control across…
exposure-defocus, bossung, exposure latitude, cpk, lithography window, semiconductor process window, process capability
A process window is the region of process-parameter space — dose and focus, in lithography's most common case — where a manufacturing step still produces results within…
lithography, depth of focus, exposure latitude, overlapping process window, contour plot, manufacturability margin, CD specification limit, process centering, FEM data
Process window analysis determines the actual range of focus and exposure dose within which patterned features meet their critical-dimension specification — taking raw…
focus exposure matrix qualification, lithography pwq procedure, process window margin verification, pwq defect density mapping
Process window qualification (PWQ) is the experimental and analytical methodology used in advanced semiconductor manufacturing to empirically map, qualify, and monitor…
near data processing chip, pim architecture dram, samsung axdimm, pim programming model
High-bandwidth memory (HBM) is DRAM stacked vertically and connected to its host through an interface thousands of bits wide, running beside the processor on an interposer rather…
metrology
Spectroscopic ellipsometry and inline optical wafer metrology constitute the non-destructive physical measurement and defect detection disciplines that govern yield control across…
professional foundry, process capability, Cpk, SPC, quality certification
Professional, in semiconductor manufacturing, is not a marketing adjective — it is a measurable statistical claim. A "professional-grade" fab process is one that has been proven…
pt, laboratory, calibration, round robin, iso 17025, quality, metrology
Proficiency testing is a quality assurance method where laboratories analyze standardized reference samples to verify their testing competence — external organizations provide…
stylus profilometry, optical profilometry, step height measurement, surface profilometer, film step height, stylus scan, cmp dishing profilometry, metrology
Profilometry is the quantitative surface metrology technique used to measure physical step heights, film thickness topography, post-CMP dishing and erosion, and 2D/3D surface…