advanced packaging

The CxO Summit at SEMICON Europa 2025 spotlighted Europe’s ongoing efforts to build a resilient and globally competitive semiconductor industry, while calling for greater ambition, speed, and unity in execution. Following global disruptions with the automotive supply chain crisis, the European Union launched a continent-wide strategy through the EU Chips Act. While the Act has already spurred significant developments, including construction of the new ESMC fab in Dresden, Europe remains far from its goal of achieving a 20% share of global semiconductor production by 2030. The CxO Summit, part of the SEMICON Europa event in Munich, provided an opportunity for industry leaders to share ideas about how to catalyze the next phase of the European industry’s growth.Ajit Manocha, President and CEO of SEMI opened the summit by describing today’s industry landscape with one word: “unprecedented.” Manocha said, “The global growth of the industry is unprecedented, with 107 new fabs set to come online by 2028, but the uncertainties are unprecedented, from geopolitics to the talent shortage to environmental concerns. So we need unprecedented solutions.” Ajit Manocha, President and CEO, SEMILaith Altimime, President of SEMI Europe echoed the mood of uncertainty, describing Europe as caught “in a perfect storm.” Altimime said, “As we face a combination of internal challenges and intensifying external competition, collaboration is not optional — it is mission critical.” Laith Altimime, President, SEMI EuropePierre Chastenet, Head of the Unit for Microelectronics and Photonics, European Commission, highlighted the tangible progress made under the EU Chips Act. “We now have a proper toolbox to handle a future crisis in the supply chain. The Chips for Europe initiative has led to the creation of five pilot lines for advanced technologies such as FD-SOI and wide bandgap semiconductors.” Chastenet added, “Europe must now capitalize on its strengths, from materials and equipment to design tools and cutting-edge research emerging from our RTOs.”Pierre Chastanet, Head of the Unit for Microelectronics and Photonics, European CommissionEchoing the call for action, Oliver Schenk, Member of the European Parliament, urged stronger regional unity. “Europe must act together, act faster, and act with much bigger ambition,” Schenk said, reinforcing the need for cross-border commitment to strengthen the continent’s semiconductor position.Oliver Schenk, Member of the European Parliament, European ParliamentHighlighting Europe’s most critical technology gap, Luc Van den hove, President and CEO of imec, unveiled plans for a new advanced fab backed by €2.5 billion in investment from the EU, the Flemish government, and ASML. Van den hove urged Europe to commit wholeheartedly to advanced technologies: “We must be more ambitious, and focus on disruptive breakthroughs rather than incremental change if we want to ensure a prosperous future.”Luc Van den hove, President CEO, imecAt the CxO Summit, CEA-Leti and ASML signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to deepen their collaboration and accelerate innovation in mainstream semiconductor technologies. Building on promising results in hybrid bonding, the partnership will now target 'More-than-Moore' innovations, including heterogeneous integration and novel substrates like SiC and GaN. “We aim to combine ASML’s world-class lithography expertise with CEA-Leti’s system-level innovation,” said Sébastien Dauvé, CEO of CEA-Leti. The collaboration is set to strengthen Europe’s ecosystem by shortening the path from early research to industrial impact.Left: Anne Hidma, Senior Vice President EUR US, ASML; Right: Sébastien Dauvé, CEO, CEA-LetiTurning to Europe’s industrial base, Christian Senger, CEO of Volkswagen Autonomous Mobility, emphasized the need to shift from risk-aversion to opportunity. While the region’s automotive sector faces intense global competition, particularly from China, Senger highlighted that Europe has the potential to lead in new mobility markets. “The market for autonomous roboshuttles for people transport in large cities is forecast to be worth €400 billion in the US and Europe alone,” he said. With American firms like Waymo and Uber leading the robotaxi space, Senger stressed that Europe must “act swiftly to create an environment that supports an autonomous mobility industry here.”Christian Senger, Member of the Board for Fully Autonomous Mobility and Transport CEO of ADMT GmbH, VolkswagenEurope’s Potential to Create Advanced TechnologyOne of these RTOs, CEA-Leti, is responsible for the FAMES pilot line for FD-SOI technology. Sébastien Dauvé, CEO of CEA-Leti, agreed with Pierre Chastenet that the pilot lines show great promise. He said, “FD-SOI is a big trend in semiconductors, because it enables very low power consumption in embedded devices. We think that adoption of the technology will grow in the coming years, and that is good, because most of the technology is produced in Europe.”Sébastien Dauvé, CEO, CEA-LetiEurope is also widely recognized to be the leading global voice on sustainability – a huge issue of concern to the semiconductor industry. Henri Berthe, President of the Semiconductor and Battery Segment at Scheider Electric, told the summit that 500 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year are attributable to the semiconductor industry – “more than the whole of Mexico emits!” he said. “We need to make fabs more efficient, and that is why Schneider Electric has launched a new playbook with Applied Materials for sustainable energy abundance for the industry.”Henri Berthe, President of the Semiconductor Segment, Schneider ElectricAnother aspect of Europe’s playbook is support for new fabs. The flagship is ESMC, the joint venture between TSMC, NXP Semiconductors, Bosch, and Infineon. Christian Koitzsch, president and managing director of ESMC, reported to the summit that the project to build in Dresden a 12nm FinFET foundry and a 28nm CMOS line, requiring a total investment of €10bn, is on schedule. “We are now developing local supply chains, hosting a series of ESMC Supplier Days which are open not only to German but generally to European suppliers,” said Koitzsch.Christian Koitzsch, President and Managing Director, European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC)As Manfred Horstmann, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Global Foundries, pointed out, the building of the ESMC fab means that Dresden is established as the center of a cluster of semiconductor industry companies. “Global Foundries has its Fab 1 and a mask center in Dresden. In fact, one-third of the chips produced throughout the whole of Europe now comes from Dresden.”Manfred Horstmann, General Manager and Senior Vice President, GlobalFoundriesAn example of ambition was given by Terence Gan, Executive Director of the Institute of Microelectronics of Singapore. Gan told the summit how Singapore has used pilot lines to stimulate research and development in new technologies. He said: “We started research into advanced packaging as long ago as 2011. Most people thought we were mad! But today, there is strong demand for our advanced packaging capabilities because of the rise of AI and its need for high-performance computing.”Terence Gan, Executive Director, Institute of MicroelectronicsBreaking Barriers to ProgressDespite momentum, bureaucratic inefficiencies continue to hamper progress. Narjiss Haddaoui, Managing Director of European Economics called for faster decision-making: “In global competition, speed is a decisive factor. To act fast enough, the EU must change its ‘software’ - the processes by which it considers and makes decisions.” Narjiss Haddaoui, Managing Director, European economicsThe stifling character of European bureaucracy is reflected in the region’s approach to building fabs. Herbert Blaschitz, Executive Vice President of Advanced Technology Facilities at Exyte, compared fab construction timelines: 20 months in Taiwan, 34 in Europe, and 38 in the U.S., attributing delays in Europe to paperwork bottlenecks.Herbert Blaschitz, Executive VP of Advanced Technology Facilities, ExyteFabio Gualandris, President for Quality, Manufacturing and Technology at STMicroelectronics raised another concern — 100% of raw materials used in European fabs come from outside the region. Christophe Frey, Vice-President for EU Engagements at Arm France, added that geopolitical tensions are clouding the path forward: “We are a bit lost in the smoke from the big fire in the world’s semiconductor industry.” Fabio Gualandris, President Quality, Manufacturing Technology, STMicroelectronics Christophe Frey, Vice-President of EU Engagements, Arm FrancePlaybooks For Future SuccessSo amid the uncertainty and global tension, what lessons can the industry learn from successful regional examples? Tuomas Korpela, Business Development Senior Manager at Nokia, credited Finland’s strategic procurement and policy tools with enabling a vibrant semiconductor ecosystem: “Finland creates demand for advanced chips using industrial policy tools, alongside strategic procurement in sectors such as defense and aerospace, and connectivity.” Tuomas Korpela, Business Development Senior Manager - Corporate Development Organization, NokiaAt a regional level, Joerg Schulze, Director of the Bavarian Chips Alliance, said that his organization was supported by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, as well as by companies and universities. “We help semiconductor companies to establish themselves and grow here through help with site searches, networking and contacts, funding and support, and talent acquisition,” said Schulze.Joerg Schulze, Spokesperson for the Bavarian Chips Alliance, Director of the Fraunhofer IISB, Bayern Innovativ GmbHCompanies in the European semiconductor supply chain also provided the summit with their insights into the roots of global success. André Grede, Chief Technology Officer of Comet, described how his company’s strategy is not to wait for customers to tell it what they need, but to be “ahead of the curve.” Grede said: “Is staying in sync with the customer enough? Not for us - we are deeply embedded with our customers, and constantly looking to broaden our relevance to them.”André Grede, CTO, CometChristophe Maleville, Chief Technology Officer of Soitec, provided a real-world example of how this is done. He said: “Our engineered substrates using RF-SOI technology reduce the drain on a mobile phone’s battery power, and cut our customers’ board footprint thanks to RF front end integration. As a result, our products are now in 100% of 5G smartphones.”Christophe Maleville, CTO, SoitecAnne Hidma, Senior Vice-President for Europe and the US at ASML, shared the company’s success formula: “The reasons for ASML’s success include customer focus – decide which markets you are going to be in, and which you are not. We are also all-in on innovation. We nurture an ecosystem, which for us includes imec and CEA-Leti, as well as partnerships with academia. And lastly, we have a strong supply base, which is a core strength of Europe.” In a time marked by both uncertainty and opportunity, the example of ASML shows how the European semiconductor supply chain can survive and thrive.Anne Hidma, Senior Vice President EUR US, ASMLEurope’s Path ForwardThe CxO Summit made one thing clear: Europe has world-class innovation, policy momentum, and industrial commitment. What’s needed now is faster execution, deeper collaboration, and the courage to invest in the technologies of tomorrow. As the industry heads toward the $1 trillion milestone, the decisions made today will shape Europe’s place in the semiconductor world for decades to come.On behalf of SEMI, the SEMI Europe team would like to express appreciation to the industry leaders for sharing their visions and readiness to collaborate during the CxO Summit.SEMI ContactLaith Altimime, President SEMI [email protected]

To help the semiconductor industry keep pace with increasing chip performance and cost demands, SEMI has formed the Advanced Packaging Heterogeneous Integration (APHI) Technology Community as part of our longstanding support of advanced packaging innovation through events and standards development. 

a memory market rebound will help spark a global semiconductor industry recovery poised to take hold in the second half of 2023 after the downturn that came on the heels of the pandemic boom, SEMI and major market research firms projected at Strategic Materials Conference (SMC) Korea 2023.

The SEMI FlexTech R&D program recently completed project FT19-19-190 with SAFI-Tech to create a solder material with a substantially lower melting point than conventional solder paste, reducing the thermal stresses created by high-temperature processing used for smaller packaging technologies.

For the semiconductor industry to flourish, all chip ecosystems must embrace closer ties, greater openness, and more flexibility to co-innovate solutions in today’s rapidly unfolding global digital transformation.

Humanity has survived almost unimaginable challenges over the past 5,000 years of documented human history. From war, famine and natural disasters to the first global pandemic in the last 100 years, more often than not, people have relied on one another to survive and thrive again. As the industry association representing the global microelectronics industry, SEMI has similarly made collaboration and community integral to the fabric of its organization. From helping members to succeed through the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitating member-driven industry standards around environmental health and safety, materials, and manufacturing capabilities, this approach shows members that standing together is better than standing alone.On the eve of the 50th annual SEMICON West (July 20-23, 2020) — the first virtual edition in SEMI’s history — I spoke with SEMI’s vice president of technology communities, Michael Ciesinski, about the role of SEMI in tackling big challenges through an active member community intent on solving problems through collaboration.SEMI: How long have you worked with SEMI and in what capacity?Ciesinski: In January 2016, I started my second tour at SEMI when FlexTech, the industry consortium I’d been leading, became SEMI’s first strategic partner. Nearly two years into that role, SEMI President CEO Ajit Manocha asked me to form Technology Communities to engage members with common interests. After FlexTech, we brought on the Fab Owners Alliance, then MEMS Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), and later the Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance).SEMI now has more than 20 communities in all, including Smart MedTech, Smart Data AI, Smart Manufacturing, Electronic Materials, and Integrated Packaging, Assembly and Test.SEMI: What is your role with Technology Communities — and how do members stand to benefit?Ciesinski: The leadership of Technology Communities ensures that SEMI’s benefits and services align to our members’ interests so we can provide member benefits that matter most. This spans forming communities where people hold common interests (e.g., advanced packaging) to facilitating standards that will promote intelligence in manufacturing (e.g., data standards for AI and machine learning) as well as providing R D funding.I’m especially proud that over the past three years, SEMI has brought more than $40 million in R D funding to our members, with most grants in the $500,000-$1 million range. We’ve been especially successful in securing funding in flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) through U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL), a model we first developed through FlexTech.Two recent recipients of FHE funding, GE Research and ITN Energy Systems, show how the grants are spawning partnership opportunities among commercial enterprises, R D organizations and universities. In developing lightweight, non-invasive wearables, including a human-performance sweat-monitoring patch that remotely analyzes sweat to detect hydration levels and other vital signs, GE Research is using key components such as sensors and lightweight batteries in its designs.ITN Energy Systems designed a flexible all-solid-state lithium battery that’s printed on light, flexible substrates to power small and incredibly thin applications.Universities are also benefiting by plugging into the SEMI ecosystem. In fact, 40-50 percent of funded projects are seeding commercialization by universities. This is another validation that SEMI’s collaborative, community approach to microelectronics is working.SEMI: Position, Timing and Navigation (PNT) is another hot area where SEMI has secured ARL funding. What makes this funding different and why is it important?Ciesinski: The PNT grant makes ARL funding available to the MEMS Sensors Industry Group (MSIG) members through SEMI for the first time. If you’ve ever lost GPS signal while coming out of a tunnel, you know how frustrating that is. For us, that’s an inconvenience, but for a healthcare worker in a remote location who’s waiting for a delivery of medication by drone, it could be life-critical. While that’s just one example of why we need PNT to operate when GPS isn’t available, I can imagine dozens of other important dual-use cases, including autonomous driving.SEMI: How else do Technology Communities benefit under SEMI?Ciesinski: Technology Communities need access to diverse resources to spur continuous innovation. Electronic Materials Group participants, for example, need to stay informed on regulations coming out of Asia, the U.S. and Europe that may affect their businesses. Where else other than SEMI can like-minded stakeholders congregate with people up and down the supply chain to determine whether industry-wide action is needed on regulation?SEMI: What is the importance of SEMI’s global footprint?Ciesinski: I’ve worked with many associations and managed major industry consortia. The clear advantage of SEMI is our global footprint. And that’s vital because microelectronics is a global industry involving a multitude of stakeholders that play essential roles in the supply chain.Let’s say you want to discuss EU regulations on hazardous chemicals. Rather than decipher these complexities alone, you can pick up the phone to speak with someone on SEMI’s European team to learn what’s critical.What if you’d like more information on the 20-plus new fabs that are going up in China? You can explore that question with our SEMI China or SEMI Industry Research and Statistics teams.SEMI: How has SEMI evolved over the years?Ciesinski: SEMI has a long history of providing what the industry cares about. We started in trade shows and pivoted to industry standards. We began with small silicon wafers and wafer carriers, and now within the span of 50 years we’re working on data-format standards that will support the application of AI and machine learning (ML) in the semiconductor industry.While highly varied today, data-format standards will help component manufacturers refine processes to create more efficient solutions. This ARL-funded program, which pairs SEMI members with the grant recipient, Cornell University, may offer dramatic gains in the productivity of semiconductor manufacturing.SEMI: How does SEMI’s approach to COVID-19 reflect core values of collaboration and community?Ciesinski: Together with Ajit Manocha, CMO Terry Tsao and other team members at SEMI, we pulled together a task force to help SEMI members navigate the pandemic.We tapped two existing groups, Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) and Information Technology Leadership (ITL) from the start, documenting their strategic and tactical approaches to help all members through the COVID-19 resource section of our website. The EHS section provides tips on facilities and meetings, employee policies, business travel and communications, while the ITL section lists insights on computing hardware for staff, licensing, networks, security and employee policies.Our EHS leadership team, which includes Entegris, Axcelis, Versum, and Intel, immediately started sharing best practices for sanitizing facilities. As a result of team meetings, SEMI EHS shared best practices on keeping the workforce remote and guidelines for returning people to work safely. From securing PPE and safeguarding employees and visitors by performing thermal scanning to outlining communications around potential employee exposures, EHS has provided meaningful resources for the benefit of all members.SEMI also took immediate steps in the area of advocacy. Our advocacy team in Washington, D.C., together with regional SEMI presidents around the world, have ensured that semiconductor facilities were and still are considered essential businesses in the U.S., Europe and Asia. That’s because microelectronics are foundational to fighting the pandemic.Microfluidics are critical to the Reverse Transcription (RT) Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests most commonly used for COVID-19. Sensors are embedded in the pulse oximeters that allow patients and healthcare professionals to monitor a vital rubric: oxygen saturation level. If oxygen saturation level drops into the low 90 percentiles or below, it may be time to go to the hospital for treatment.Microcontroller units are essential components in a wide range of hospital equipment, including the ventilators that may make the difference between life and death in the most seriously ill patients.SEMI: How can the ingenuity realized through microelectronics continue to help us tackle other big problems? Ciesinski: We have MEMS and sensors to thank for distributed intelligence, giving us the ability to put sensors anywhere, locally based in the field or in the packaging house.Food production is a prime example. Leveraging miniaturized wirelessly connected sensors, we can trace food through the entire production lifecycle, from the seed in the ground to the food in the warehouse and, ultimately, to the product that lands on the table.From larger enterprise such as IBM Food Trust to small startups, we’re using MEMS and sensors to improve crop yields so we can feed a human population that’s growing each year.There’s a sustainability piece as well. We’re using MEMS and sensors to reduce the amount of fertilizer or other nutrients or chemicals in the soil. That’s good for the environment and for the agricultural workers who labor in the fields.MEMS and sensors can also condense the time it takes to perform a specific task, conserving human resources.SEMI: Where do you think SEMI will go in the next decade?Ciesinski: Ten years from now, I believe we will still have our global footprint in place. I expect it will expand, particularly in Asia.We may also expand into new areas such as Latin America and Central America, which would provide at least two major benefits: People working in microelectronics would, I hope, have access to better quality of life. And diversifying the supply chain would allow nations and regions to have more control over the products they need, from PPE to medications, which may help us to better manage through the next pandemic.I am also hopeful that SEMI will be on the leading edge of helping our members communicate in much different fashion from what we have today. We’re already expanding beyond the paradigm of in-person meetings for standards meetings and conferences. As we move forward, I think we’ll see a hybrid solution to doing business, combining in-person meetings with virtual conferences and digital content that’s available 24/7.Whatever changes we see in SEMI, I’m confident that we will continue to see a global footprint in an industry association that prioritizes connections among members.Engage in the SEMI experience at upcoming SEMICON WestRegister today to hear from keynote speakers such as environmental advocate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, futurist and author Steve Brown, and IBM Research senior vice president and director Dr. John E. Kelly III, and Lea Gabrielle, special envoy of the Global Engagement Center for the U.S. State Department, at SEMICON West , July 20-23, 2020. Content will be live streamed and available on-demand. Michael Ciesinski is vice president of Technology Communities for SEMI, the global microelectronics industry association, appointed in August 2018. At SEMI, he directs activity for more than 20 industry groups, oversees the association’s R D funding program, and develops new technology initiatives to serve SEMI’s 2,400 members. Prior to re-joining SEMI, Ciesinski was president/CEO of FlexTech Alliance, an industry consortium focused on new methods of creating electronics. From 1995-2008, Ciesinski served in a similar role at the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC), a private/public partnership chartered with building the infrastructure for electronic display and flexible electronics manufacturing. Both FlexTech and USDC annually sponsor multimillion dollar technology development programs and provide industry technical, financial and market services. Ciesinski is a graduate of the University of Albany, NY, and a former member of the Dean’s Advisory Committee at California Polytechnic State University.Maria Vetrano is a PR consultant at SEMI.

Emerging applications powered by 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) are expected to be a boon to the semiconductor industry, but only once chipmakers overcome a key challenge: Architecting chips that meet the exacting performance, power consumption, size and cost requirements of devices for mid- to high-end applications. One technology – heterogeneous integration – promises to meet these demands and help drive future leaps in semiconductor innovation in the post-Moore era. To help the industry better grasp the technology challenges and business opportunities associated with deploying highly integrated chip and packaging technologies, SEMI and AI on Chip Taiwan Alliance recently gathered industry leaders from organizations including ASE, Unimicron, Dialog Semiconductor, Cadence and AITA to discuss technology trends and the vital importance of building a cross-industry exchange platform to advance next-generation manufacturing processes critical to heterogeneous integration. Following are key takeaways from the forum, Heterogeneous Integration Enables 5G and AI. Overcoming Heterogeneous Integration Technology Challenges Key to Advances in Taiwan High-End Semiconductor Manufacturing The introduction of the Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR) by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors team in 2016 was an important first step, Dr. C.P. Hung, Vice President of ASE Group, noted in his opening remarks. The HIR is designed to stimulate pre-competitive collaboration to advance heterogeneous integration technology development and accelerate electronics innovation. The roadmap provides a long-term vision for the electronics industry, identifying future technology requirements and potential solutions. Today, the HIR working group focuses on high-performance computing (HPC), 5G and other leading-edge technologies.Dr. Hung predicted that heterogenous integration will reshape traditional collaborations between the semiconductor ecosystem and supply chain in order to clear I/O bottlenecks that hamstring high-performance applications. The retooled industry connections will also need to enable high I/O pin counts, ultra-thin devices, and high-frequency signal shields. In an important step forward, the chip industry today is developing a platform that enhances wafer-level advanced packaging services and deepens cooperation with Oversea Assembly and Testing (OSAT) and substrate supply chain partners. Overcoming the current limits of IC substrates – the connection between IC chips the PCB – is one key for heterogeneous integration technology to flourish, said Dr. Yu-Hua Chen, Vice President, Carrier SBU, RD Division of Unimicron. He noted that the industry must tackle limits to PCB thickness, substrate density, fine pitch and automation to meet the needs of high-end packaging customers. Another barrier the industry must be surmounted is to make the currently inscrutable confidentiality requirements for patents of foreign materials – key to improving chip yields – easier to access and understand for substrate engineers. Chen said partnerships across the entire industry will be necessary to break through this and other technology breakthroughs. Supply Chain and Cross-Border Ecosystem to Strengthen Partnerships for Further DevelopmentTaiwan has long invested heavily in advancing semiconductor manufacturing and application engineering technologies to become a top global chipmaking hub and, in the process, has been behind significant leaps in optimizing chip functionality, said Leroy Liu, General Manager, Asia Headquarters, of Dialog Semiconductor (Germany). With its semiconductor manufacturing prowess, Taiwan can also play a central role in maturing advanced heterogeneous integration packaging technology while managing development costs by partnering with its international supply chain community to overcome technical challenges more effectively, Liu said. The region can also help forge partnerships, even among competitors, to build the ecosystem essential for heterogeneous integration technology to shine.EDA tools will be critical in understanding and resolving heterogeneous integration technical issues since IC substrate, packaging and chip design all pose interdisciplinary engineering challenges, said Julian Sun, Product Marketing Director at Cadence. To help the industry navigate these challenges, Cadence has launched intelligent system design products – solutions that address a wide range of design problems with semiconductor nanometers, micrometers on packaging and testing, and PCB level micro/millimeters to Pin/Pitch, I/O models, and thermals and electricity. By supporting various technical designs, Cadence helps customers shorten the design cycle to strengthen design quality and reduce costs.Sun also pointed to the vital importance of overcoming the significant challenge of designing silicon interposers for heterogeneous integration. Today’s EDA tools are capable of optimizing the design of complex structures including 5GAiP and HBM and are instrumental in aiding Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem players to quickly adapt to shifts in the evolving heterogeneous integration market.Heterogeneous Integration Enables 5G and AI speakers (L-R): Julian Sun, Product Marketing Director at Cadence, Dr. Yu-Hua Chen, Vice President, Carrier SBU, RD Division of Unimicron, Dr. C.P. Hung, Vice President of ASE Group, Leroy Liu, General Manager, Asia Headquarters, of Dialog Semiconductor (Germany), Dr. Shih-Chieh Chang, AITA Executive Secretary Designing AI chips is particularly difficult as semiconductor makers struggle with high costs and low yields, said Dr. Shih-Chieh Chang, AITA’s Executive Secretary. That’s why the chip industry now uses FPGAs for small-volume production of AI chips, which makes it easier to improve manufacturing yield through redundant design. For its part, AITA has formed a special interest group (SIG) to help form connections among the chip industry, academia and research institutes. The association’s goal is to build a platform for mass production of AI chips.To get involved in SEMI Taiwan Heterogeneous Integration related events, please contact Ula Huang, outreach senior specialist, at [email protected] Fang is a coordinator and Ashley Huang is a specialist in marketing and public relations at SEMI Taiwan.

SEMI has long promoted the industry collaboration that has contributed to the rise of the smart digital world we live in today. A world where data is being generated continuously by systems, gadgets, and sensors around us – often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). In our personal lives, most of us have smartphones, smart watches, smart TVs and smart cars, and we live in smart homes and smart cities generating huge amounts of data.In the work world, data and analytics are now influencing almost every industry including healthcare, government, financial services, construction and transportation. This data has the potential to transform our lives and make our world even smarter – if we can communicate and process this data, and use it to come up with actionable recommendations or actions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques have generated much excitement precisely because they offer us ways to realize the full value of data by harnessing it and transforming it into active intelligence.Data-intensive technologies are required to store, communicate and analyze data. And it all starts with innovation in microelectronics chips and systems spanning processors, memory, sensors, radios and other devices, presenting a huge opportunity to producers of these technologies. However, with Moore's Law beginning to slow, technology paths and innovation options are diverging. Companies must swiftly assess these options in order to develop competitive offerings. But the technological complexity and divergence makes it increasingly expensive or even unaffordable for many companies to track and pursue these options.The good news is that cost-effective early assessment is possible through pre-competitive collaboration that can produce new and often unexpected cross-disciplinary insights by overcoming traditional silos in industry and academia. Unfortunately, important collaborative industry platforms, such as the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), have folded, opening a collaboration gap in the global microelectronics ecosystem.As part of its mission to help companies connect, collaborate, and innovate, SEMI has built a collaborative, cross-supply-chain platform – the Strategic Innovation Platform (SIP). The goal is to provide early and comprehensive assessment of future technologies that are five to eight years away from commercialization. The assessment identifies not just technical barriers but also manufacturing and supply-chain constraints to implementing new technologies. SIP brings together the entire microelectronics ecosystem including strategic technology thought leaders, subject matter experts, technology and application developers, academia, researchers, start-ups and government. With more than 2,100-member companies spread across the global electronics manufacturing supply chain, SEMI is uniquely positioned to enable this critical collaboration. Award-Winning First ProjectThe inaugural SIP project assessed key drivers of future technologies. A key finding was that fast, efficient interconnects between devices and components are critical to the system performance important to customers and users, implying that system-level optimization is required. For data-intensive applications, interconnects have emerged as a key bottleneck for both performance and power in various circuits and systems in part because the slowing of Moore’s Law has decelerated advances in individual device performance, and in part because systems are becoming more complex, requiring heterogeneous integration.To address this challenge, SIP brought together industry experts from ASE Inc., Dow Chemical, Lam Research, Qualcomm and Xilinx to assess the future impact of interconnects for data-intensive applications. SEMI also involved Stanford University professors to collaborate on modeling and simulation. Through this unique cross-disciplinary collaboration, SIP developed a realistic model to evaluate the system-level performance of single-chip systems, as well as multi-chip systems – including traditional 2D packages, high-performance 2.5D systems that use interposers, and futuristic 3D systems. SIP also explored supply chain challenges in business continuity, manufacturability, Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) and the regulatory environment. SEMI worked with a broad range of industry partners to ensure that the model parameters accurately reflected realities on the design and factory floors to ensure usable results. Experimentation has become ever more expensive, with one industry player reporting that “it costs us $100 million to do a good experimental evaluation.” Accurate models can go a long way toward reducing the cost of technology assessment. The SIP collaboration produced key quantifiable insights including comparisons that highlight the benefits and limitations of various materials being explored for future interconnects, and of architectures under consideration for future data-intensive applications. For example, the current workhorse for artificial intelligence (AI) platforms – 2.5D technology – delivers a 4X improvement over 2D packaging but falls short of providing the orders-of-magnitude improvement that future AI/ML applications may require. These findings enable the industry to begin to identify ways to optimize 2.5D architectures, transition to 3D heterogeneous integration for performance-critical applications in the medium term, and to eventually evaluate new paradigms such as neuromorphic and quantum. The project findings were presented late last year in the form of two research papers at Electronics System-Integration Technology Conferences (ESTC) and International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS) recently. One received the “Best Paper of the Session” award at IMAPS – a recognition that affirms the power of a collaborative platform such as SIP to produce valuable insights to address the growing technology complexity within the microelectronics industry. The microelectronics industry is on the cusp of a historic inflection point, where it could fuel the rise of emerging applications in AI/ML and IoT, and can grow into a trillion dollar industry over the next several years. More importantly, the industry is poised to help solve some of society’s most complex problems in areas including healthy living, climate change and transportation. No company can do this alone, and pre-competitive platforms such as SIP are key both to accelerating innovation through cross-disciplinary collaboration, and to reducing costs for individual companies. Please contact Tom Salmon at [email protected] or Pushkar Apte at [email protected] for more details and to get involved in future projects.Tom Salmon is vice president of Collaborative Technology Platforms. Pushkar Apte is a strategic technology advisor at SEMI.