Fiber Optic Interconnect – High Technology Business Development

Courtesy of Ivo Bolsens (Xilinx), SEMI ISS 2014

Don’t pop the champagne just yet! Although plenty of good news was shared at the 2014 SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) there was the sobering outlook of possible limited long-term growth due to technology issues as well as economic projections. Noticeable was the lack of news and updates on key industry developments.

This is the yearly “data rich” or “data overload” (take your pick) conference of semiconductor supply chain executives. The majority of the attendees and presenters are from the SEMI member companies that develop the equipment, materials, processes, and technology used to build, test, and package semiconductors. Keeping the pressure on for advanced technology were the “end customer” attendees and presenters – semi-conductor manufacturers.

The official theme was “Pervasive Computing – An Enabler for Future Growth” and the presentations made it clear Continue reading “SEMI ISS 2014 – Scaling Innovation”

My event summary recently published in Chip Scale Review Tech Monthly:

Is 3D semiconductor packaging really the Lego of the integrated circuit (IC) world? It is a great analogy for the range of possible solutions and flexibility provided by different flavors of 3D packaging (2.5D on interposer, 3D, 5.5D, etc.) and “colors” (homogenous and heterogeneous) of die stacks. Plenty of pictures of Legos and scanning electron microscope (SEM) images were shown last week at the RTI International Technology Venture Forum symposium and conference “3-D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging”. Presenters clearly articulated the great promise of what could be built with 3D packaging. At the same time, progress towards solving the multitude of challenges to make this technology as pervasive, if not as easy to use and fun, as Legos was discussed.

The challenges span Continue reading “Chip Scale Review: News from 3-D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging”