"Change in Industry Drivers for Advanced IC and Package Technology" was the subject of the luncheon speech. He pointed out that the IC industry averaged 16% annual sales gain from 1970-95 but only about 7-10% since. Consumers are the growing market now with wireless and Internet products leading the way with +15% growth, in contrast with lackluster PC and military sales.

He sees the emphasis on real time signal processing, low power consumption, continued fast turn around of product designs, and product that is firm ware or software programmable to many international standards (as in wireless). In packaging this usually means more I/O and System in Package (in contrast to SOC).

He sees more big companies balancing internal and external manufacturing since it is hard to stay on top of all the games.

If one tries for system on a chip it must be for something that is in large volume demand which has only a few possible sources. This is needed to justify the expense of integrating several technologies on one chip line and the relatively long design cycle.

In summary he stated that our industry is maturing in revenue and technology. We have to become more consumer oriented and provide real-time processing. Packaging is critical to our overall product design (small size and richness of features), performance, power usage, and cost.