9th TOPICAL MEETING ON ELECTRICAL PERFORMANCE OF ELECTRONIC PACKAGING
The 9th Topical Meeting on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging (EPEP) was held at Radisson Resort & Spa, Scottsdale, Arizona, from October 23-25, 2000. It was the most successful meeting todate with 54 oral presentations, 23 poster papers and more than 260 people from ten countries attending the meeting.
EPEP provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest advances in electrical design, analysis and characterization of on-chip and packaging interconnections and structures for digital, mixed signal, RF, microwave and mm-wave applications. The meeting is aimed at bringing together researchers and practicing engineers from industry, universities and government laboratories from around the world to address all current and future issues affecting the electrical performance of high-speed electronic systems.
The meeting consisted of a keynote talk in the plenary session given by Bob Sankman (Intel Corp). Bob's talk was on "Packaging Challenges Of The New Millenium" wherein he pointed out the issues related to power delivery, heat dissipation, interconnect density, and signal integrity. In addition, six invited talks addressed important topics, such as interconnect requirements in high speed switches for internet backbones, trends and techniques for high speed high density chip-to-chip interconnects, on-chip power distribution, lo-temp co-fired ceramic technology, and design for manufacturing of RF MCM-L. Seven short courses were also offered on the day prior to the start of the meeting. The tutorials were given by well known experts in the field and covered important topics such as interconnect design, measurements, modeling, characterization and power distribution. A special session on MOR was used to bring together experts in this important area to discuss the pros and cons of various methods used.
Two best paper awards were offered this year which were sponsored by Intel Corporation and IBM. A total of 15 students competed for these awards which were decided by a committee chaired by Tawfik Arabi and Moises Cases. The IBM award was given to Luca Daniel from the University of California at Berkeley, for his paper entitled "Interconnect Electromagnetic Modeling using Conduction Modes as Global Basis Functions". His co-authors were Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli (UCB) and Jacob White (MIT). The Intel award was given to Joong Ho Kim of Georgia Tech for his paper entitled "Modeling of Irregular Shaped Power Distribution Networks Using Transmission Matrix Method ". His co-author was Madhawan Swaminathan. Congratulations Luca and Joong-Ho for your outstanding performance. Thank you Intel and IBM for the awards.
We tried several firsts this year. A website "EPEP.ORG" was created and became a handy tool for disseminating information. The conference proceeding is available on a CD. Electronic projection was used by 60% of all presenters. Thank you Paul Baltes (our executive chair) for making these happen.
An outdoor banquet -award ceremony was held on the second day with Mariachi music. The theme was the Old West, with a special hispanic touch. Many attendees participated in gunfights under the watchful eyes of two cowboys, which created a very informal atmosphere for the meeting. During the banquet awards were given to Dale Becker, Larry Smith, Moises Cases, Tawfik Arabi, Y L Li, Luc Martens, Dylan Williams, Bob Jackson, K C Gupta, Tappan Sarkar, Andreas Cangellaris, Al Ruehli, Alina Deutsch, and Madhawan Swaminathn for their contributions to EPEP.
This year we have two special issues based on EPEP-2000 in the IEEE MTT and CPMT transactions. The guest editors are John Prince and Ravi Kaw for CPMT and Madhavan Swaminathan and Robert Jackson for MTT. The manuscript due dates for both issues is Jan 15, 2001.
We would like to thank the authors, presenters, invited speakers, tutorial instructors, student award committee, guest editors, paper reviewers of special issues, and technical program committee members for their contributions in making EPEP-2000 a grand success. We also would like to thank the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society and the IEEE Components, Pack-aging and Manufacturing Technology Society for their sponsorship. Special thanks to all vendors and coffee sponsors.
Ravi Kaw's two year term as Co-Chair of EPEP has come to an end. George Katopis will be replacing him for a two year term. He wants to thank John Prince (co-chair) for all his help and extends his best wishes to John Prince and George Katopis for the next year. Next year's EPEP will be held next to MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It will be preceded by a special program "Future Directions in IC and Package Design Workshop" at the same location.