The Opportunity
Enabling Unit Level Traceability & Labelling on all semiconductors
The semiconductor industry supply chain needs more than ever the tools required for Unit Level Traceability of semiconductors. This is needed when a semiconductor fails in the field. Mission-critical devices require an investigation. The Root Cause Anaylis is most effective when the semiconductor X & Y position on the wafer is available. Saving time, guesswork and sometimes limiting siginifically a recall.
Industry driver for adopting Digitho's Unit Level Traceability and Labelling Solution
Supply Chain Complexity
The semiconductor industry supply chain is highly complex as many stakeholders have specific and specialized role from the fabrication to the final assembly of a
device.
In addition, Fabless (design house) are developing new semiconductor design which sometimes delegates the execution of the semiconductor to an aggregator. In other situations, one semiconductor design ends up with multiple competing devices.
Making semiconductors is designed around the principle that all parts are identical, using lithographic processes to optimize throughput and quality.
Semiconductor Design for Added Functionalities
The complexity of the design of semiconductors is bringing new challenges
for the industry.
With chiplets, removing the black packaging brings in additional issues with labelling. In addition, the chip design on a chip or 2D design was usually produced in one FAB in a fully integrated design. Today, the components of a chiplets are sourced from multiple FABs and the traceability of each components is becoming even more difficult.
Mission-Critical Applications
Life-Saving and life-sustaining devices are examples of Mission Critical devices.
The .semiconductors in those devices, especially sensors (MEMS), have a key role in the operation of the device, and today’s solutions do not allow Unit Level Traceability.
The lack of ULT or label is a growing issue as mass recalls are required.
Regulation & Standards Evolution
The Regulation and Standards applicable to semiconductors are evolving due to the ubiquitous use of devices, the growing demands, and their Mission Critical role. their
The regulation in the medical industry for level 3 devices requires labelling each component. In automotive, the Semi.org organization preventively set up a standard for the sector requiring Unit Level Traceability for each semiconductor to be integrated into Level 5 autonomous vehicles.
Secreacy & NDA in the Semiconductor Supply Chain
It is a competitive advantage for stakeholders to determine where a semiconductor is made.
To manage this situation, the industry oversees semiconductor development in the supply chain with maximum secrecy by using NDA or not revealing where and when a semiconductor was being fabricated.
This creates additional issues when a semiconductor investigation is cascaded to each stakeholder. Each of them takes time and resources to determine when and who supplies a semiconductor.
ponents are becoming even more difficult.
Lot level vs. Unit Level Traceability
The industry has used databases, processes and labelling to manage semiconductor traceability.
The industry standard is Lot Level traceability. A lot is a series of wafers containing thousands of dies (semiconductors) produced as a batch. Lot level is therefore also referred to as a batch.
Lot-level traceability is demanding in the best-case scenario. Therefore, through cumbersome processes, the Fab will include an X & Y position but not the wafer of origin.
