- Email: [email protected]
New backside technology breaks inspectability barrier for high speed devices
INDUSTRY NEWS We present a selection of new equipment, technologies, processes and business moves in electronics and associated sectors taking place on the industrial microelectronics scene.
Taxis by satellite For the 2.8 million inhabitants and 6 million visitors in Singapore who rely on taxis to get around the city, booking a cab has been until now a slow and frustrating procedure. Even with 3,500 taxis on this tiny island of only 640 square kilometres, it was oRen still quicker to jump into a passing rickshaw. Citycab, one the largest taxi companies in the world, decided to resolve the problem by installing a Global Positioning System receiver from Motorola in each of its taxis as part of a new in-cab control system. Using signals from GPS satellites, the GPS receivers compute the taxis precise position on the streets to within 100 metres. This satellite technology forms part of a mobile radio data communications system developed for Citycab by UK-hased company Spectronics Micro Systems Ltd (SMS). This use of GPS technology has radically changed the traditional method of taxi control and despatch, says SMS. The company calculates a 20 per cent saving in air time by automatically locating the position of each taxi. Customer waiting time is also significantly improved by sending the nearest available taxi to the pick up point, rather than the taxi at the top of the waiting list, that may be considerably further away. For a GPS receiver to work, it needs to have a clear view of the sky to lock onto the signals transmitted from the satellites - impossible amongst the sky scrapers lining the streets of Singapore. Motorola overcame this problem with the launch of the Oncore GPS receiver. The Oncore is an eight channel GPS receiver which means it tracks the best eight available satellites. Software developed by Motorola includes internal re-acquisition of satellites in less than one second and the ability to memorise height and therefore devise a position using only two satellites. This enables the GPS to optimise vehicle location in areas where satellite visibility is limited
ii
Motorola's GPS receiver. or regularly obstructed, such as in a city centre. Motorola's 'Urban Canyon' and 'Foliage' soRware enables the receiver to operate in these environments. With the credit card sized GPS Oncore costing less than $200 each, SMS cites the GPS technology now available from Motorola as one of the key components in the success of the £4 million project for Citycab. With the taxis on the Singapore streets anticipated to increase to 6000 over the next few years, a GPS satellite positioning system may be the only thing keeping Singapore on the move. Contact: Spectronics Micro Systems Ltd.
Tel~fax: [44](0)1954-780888/781612. New backside technology breaks inspectability barrier for high-speed devices High speed generally means heavy frontside metallization or a flipped configuration (Flip Chip or Lead-on-Chip). Light emissions from static and dynamic defects - easily accessed from the front side on slower devices - are no longer available to locate
Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3
Philips MOS4YOU lab on the site o f Europes largest semiconductor plant. precise defect sites on the chip. Failure analysis engineers are thus unable to use standard Emission Microscopy techniques to pin-point failures. The only other method possible-manual probing, which can take weeks to locate a failure on a single chip is too labour-intensive even to be considered. The new BEAMS TM (Backside Emission Analysis Microscope System) entirely solves the two problems posed by high-speed devices. It quickly and safely thins the device from the backside, and illuminates the backside correctly for imaging. The Emission Microscope image made by BEAMS is the overlay of the light emitted by defects plus the illuminated image showing metallization structure. Many emissions are partly or entirely absorbed by backside silicon; the Chip UnZipTM module thins the backside to within 50 microns of metallization to allow emissions to be detected. Thinning also greatly enhances the quality of the illuminated image. This technique performs flawless backside thinning and leaves the leads intact so the device can be biased. The result is that failure analysts now have a tool that quickly and safely locates static and functional defects in hight-speed devices. Contact: Daniel T. Hurley, Hypervision
Tel~fax: [1J(510) 651-7768/1415.
Philips n e w fab M O S 4 Y O U Philips Semiconductors has recently opened MOS4YOU (Yield Output Utilisation), its latest fab in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. This billion guilder (approx. $US600,000) lab brings to five the number of wafer labs in Philips' Nijmegen complex, making it Europe's largest semiconductor plant. From the arrival of the fwst piece of equipment to first wafers out took only 98 days, which Philips believes is a world record. "The extraordinary speed of the installation and production of f'LrStsilicon is a great tribute to the skill and commitment of all those people involved," explained Stuart McIntosh, Chief Operations Officer at Philips Semiconductors. "To achieve something on that scale and of that complexity in only 98 days - including Christmas Day - is something that we at Philips are very proud of. Not only did the first silicon contain working product, but one of the early lots also contained a perfect wafer where every single die worked perhaps a unique occurrence." The 0.5-pm multilayer metal process was developed by a team from Philips Semiconductors in partnership with SGS-Thomson at the Centre Commun R&D facility in Crolles near Grenoble in France, where the next-generation 0.35-1~m process is already in preparation prior to transfer to
° , ,
III
Taxis by satellite For the 2.8 million inhabitants and 6 million visitors in Singapore who rely on taxis to get around the city, booking a cab has been until now a slow and frustrating procedure. Even with 3,500 taxis on this tiny island of only 640 square kilometres, it was oRen still quicker to jump into a passing rickshaw. Citycab, one the largest taxi companies in the world, decided to resolve the problem by installing a Global Positioning System receiver from Motorola in each of its taxis as part of a new in-cab control system. Using signals from GPS satellites, the GPS receivers compute the taxis precise position on the streets to within 100 metres. This satellite technology forms part of a mobile radio data communications system developed for Citycab by UK-hased company Spectronics Micro Systems Ltd (SMS). This use of GPS technology has radically changed the traditional method of taxi control and despatch, says SMS. The company calculates a 20 per cent saving in air time by automatically locating the position of each taxi. Customer waiting time is also significantly improved by sending the nearest available taxi to the pick up point, rather than the taxi at the top of the waiting list, that may be considerably further away. For a GPS receiver to work, it needs to have a clear view of the sky to lock onto the signals transmitted from the satellites - impossible amongst the sky scrapers lining the streets of Singapore. Motorola overcame this problem with the launch of the Oncore GPS receiver. The Oncore is an eight channel GPS receiver which means it tracks the best eight available satellites. Software developed by Motorola includes internal re-acquisition of satellites in less than one second and the ability to memorise height and therefore devise a position using only two satellites. This enables the GPS to optimise vehicle location in areas where satellite visibility is limited
ii
Motorola's GPS receiver. or regularly obstructed, such as in a city centre. Motorola's 'Urban Canyon' and 'Foliage' soRware enables the receiver to operate in these environments. With the credit card sized GPS Oncore costing less than $200 each, SMS cites the GPS technology now available from Motorola as one of the key components in the success of the £4 million project for Citycab. With the taxis on the Singapore streets anticipated to increase to 6000 over the next few years, a GPS satellite positioning system may be the only thing keeping Singapore on the move. Contact: Spectronics Micro Systems Ltd.
Tel~fax: [44](0)1954-780888/781612. New backside technology breaks inspectability barrier for high-speed devices High speed generally means heavy frontside metallization or a flipped configuration (Flip Chip or Lead-on-Chip). Light emissions from static and dynamic defects - easily accessed from the front side on slower devices - are no longer available to locate
Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3
Philips MOS4YOU lab on the site o f Europes largest semiconductor plant. precise defect sites on the chip. Failure analysis engineers are thus unable to use standard Emission Microscopy techniques to pin-point failures. The only other method possible-manual probing, which can take weeks to locate a failure on a single chip is too labour-intensive even to be considered. The new BEAMS TM (Backside Emission Analysis Microscope System) entirely solves the two problems posed by high-speed devices. It quickly and safely thins the device from the backside, and illuminates the backside correctly for imaging. The Emission Microscope image made by BEAMS is the overlay of the light emitted by defects plus the illuminated image showing metallization structure. Many emissions are partly or entirely absorbed by backside silicon; the Chip UnZipTM module thins the backside to within 50 microns of metallization to allow emissions to be detected. Thinning also greatly enhances the quality of the illuminated image. This technique performs flawless backside thinning and leaves the leads intact so the device can be biased. The result is that failure analysts now have a tool that quickly and safely locates static and functional defects in hight-speed devices. Contact: Daniel T. Hurley, Hypervision
Tel~fax: [1J(510) 651-7768/1415.
Philips n e w fab M O S 4 Y O U Philips Semiconductors has recently opened MOS4YOU (Yield Output Utilisation), its latest fab in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. This billion guilder (approx. $US600,000) lab brings to five the number of wafer labs in Philips' Nijmegen complex, making it Europe's largest semiconductor plant. From the arrival of the fwst piece of equipment to first wafers out took only 98 days, which Philips believes is a world record. "The extraordinary speed of the installation and production of f'LrStsilicon is a great tribute to the skill and commitment of all those people involved," explained Stuart McIntosh, Chief Operations Officer at Philips Semiconductors. "To achieve something on that scale and of that complexity in only 98 days - including Christmas Day - is something that we at Philips are very proud of. Not only did the first silicon contain working product, but one of the early lots also contained a perfect wafer where every single die worked perhaps a unique occurrence." The 0.5-pm multilayer metal process was developed by a team from Philips Semiconductors in partnership with SGS-Thomson at the Centre Commun R&D facility in Crolles near Grenoble in France, where the next-generation 0.35-1~m process is already in preparation prior to transfer to
° , ,
III