Who is minding the store for "next generation research"
now that industry is short term focused and manufacturing is going
to China?
It has been said many times and in many ways. Private industry
is focused on cost- cutting and short-term profits, to please
its shareholders. Manufacturing is moving "off-shore"
(away from the historic system design companies). So now who is
taking on the responsibility to do the leading-edge research that
feeds into next generations of electronic products? Contrary to
the contemporary hype, brand new technologies take almost a decade
to go from concept to marketplace. Look at TFT, MCM, Flipchip
or SMT. They have all taken approximately 10 years. So, who is
doing leading-edge research that goes into products 5 to 10 years
from now?
One answer has to be Universities and National Labs, funded by
governments in a pre-competitive environment. But, they are not
usually very effective in transferring the newest technologies
to private industry. This is due to two factors: (1) Lack of trust
by the industry that they can put these organizations in the critical
path of their product development needs, and (2) the lack of team
and system-approach culture. One way to overcome these factors
is for industry to be an integral part of these two organizations
by having its engineers partner with Universities and National
Labs, as if these are their remote R & D organizations. These
partnerships can lead to defining roadmaps, exploring new frontier
technologies, collaboratively and in shared fashion, by means
of joint projects, and demonstrate proof-of-concepts, consistent
with the industry's need to be competitive. How about IP issues
then? The IP issues should not prevent partners from working with
each other for mutual benefit. The roles and responsibilities
of Universities are complementary to Industry. Their job is to
create new knowledge and new human resources to benefit the Society.
The industry's job is to use this knowledge and these human resources
so created by the universities, to design, develop and manufacture
competitive products.
A good example is what we do at Georgia Tech in the PRC Program.
Funded by NSF, we bring about new paradigms in Packaging at two
fronts: (1) to provide unlimited connections to the IC so it is
used very efficiently, and (2) to go beyond ICs to form end-product
systems, integrating and interconnecting all the components necessary
to form that system. We are exploring a new frontier called SOP
(System-on-Package) when everybody else is pursuing SIP or SOC
for short term benefits. The latter are limited by CMOS IC technologies
in that while CMOS is excellent for digital and moderate frequency
analog switching, it is not so good for RF or Optical component
integration. In addition, most of us foresee Moore's Law fundamental
limits in CMOS. The SOP optimizes IC and package-both at design
and fabrication levels, thus leading to cost- and performance-effective
end-product systems . The concept leads to "Package, and
not the board, as the end product System".
Thus, the next generation of electronics technology is being addressed
despite the vast changes in the global business landscape.
The ECTC organizers should be congratulated for what they did in New Orleans in May. They have put together an outstanding Program: 300+ technical papers, 14 Professional Development Courses drawing 261 students, 42 technology exhibits and a number of educational programs such as academic conference and student programs. All in all, 726 attendees participated from Asia, Europe and the US. In addition, there were plenary sessions which introduced new topics such as strained silicon and polymeric transistor technology, and a panel discussion that debated how the packaging and manufacturing electronics industry was performing long range R&D.
A new technical committee called Nano Packaging is introduced to stimulate global research. This TC is already planning to hold its first International Workshop in Nano and Bio- packaging as well as start a session at next year's ECTC in Las Vegas.
Welcome new BOG members
It is my pleasure to welcome four new BOG members:
Li Li from Motorola,
David Whalley from Longborough University, UK,
Tim Adams from Dow-Corning, and
Ricky Lee from University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong.