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Jisso Conference Highlights Industry's Innovations, Challenges
May 22, 2008 |Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Editors Joe Fjelstad and Andy Shaughnessy filed this report from the 2nd Jisso International Forum in Atlanta. Technologists from around the world gathered to discuss the latest in packaging, materials and environmental regulations, as well as how to get industry buy-in for potentially disruptive technologies.
Joe: I'm coming to you this week from the Packaging Resource Center at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA. With me this week is Andy Shaughnessy, editor of Design007. We're both attending the second annual Jisso International Forum conference. We're just going to share our thoughts and impressions on what we've seen on the first day of the conference. So, Andy, what do you think about the conference so far?
Andy: Hi, Joe. Well, I was struck by how the conference started out with various speakers talking about the different packaging technologies that they saw coming online in the next three, five or 10 years. And then Stanley Bentley, president of the EMS provider Diversified Systems, came out and basically said that that this new stuff is all well and good but it sounds like it's going to be a big capital investment for manufacturers like him. So, all these cool technology ideas are still tempered by the real-life demands of capital investment.
Joe: Well, you're right. I had a brief discussion with Dr. Rao Tummala, who gave the opening presentation. Dr. Tummala has been here at the Packaging Resource Center for 15 years--he came out of IBM and he's done some important research in the IC packaging world. He's also the co-editor of the Microelectronics Packaging Handbook which gives him great credibility in this space. Anyway, we talked briefly about the fact that, yes, there are a lot of very interesting things that can be done out there. But what we do in the lab and what one needs to do when the rubber hits the road are often quite different.
Andy: It seems like that's one of the things this Jisso conference is trying to address. I think one of the speakers actually said, "How do we sell this idea to the industry?" So, how did you get involved with Jisso?
Joe: Actually, I go back to the first meeting in Chicago nine years ago. This is the ninth annual Jisso International Council Meeting, which preceded the Jisso International Conference we're attending now. It's been an uphill battle. We've mostly been working--slugging it out with folks from Asia and Europe and North America, trying to get some harmonization of standards and developments. I mean, clearly electronics is a global industry, and that's really the effort of the Jisso International Council: Trying to, if you will, herd cats!
Andy: So we have IPC on the North American side and Jisso on the Japanese side...
Joe: There's a slight difference here. Jisso basically means "mounting," and it's a hierarchical scale for looking at things from the chip to the package to the substrate to board-to-board. So that's the Japanese rendering of that term. But the Jisso International Council is really international. There are a host of standards that have been developed around the globe, and everybody's got them--the IEC, the AEA, the IEEE, the IPC, and it goes on and on. And there's a lot of overlap. So the effort is to take all these things and find the best in class in terms of standards, and make them available so that we don't have to keep on wandering from standard to standard, trying to figure out what we're doing contractually.
Andy: One area I noticed that speakers from all over the world seemed to agree was a problem was RoHS and the other environmental regulations. That doesn't seem like it's going to change any time soon, does it?
Joe: No, it's one of those sad events. The best of intentions were held out on the part of those who were promulgating these laws; it's just a shame that they didn't look deeper into it. Now, everyone in the industry pretty much knows that we've been led, or allowed ourselves to be led, down a rosy path where we didn't really want to be.
Andy: Not to change the subject, but one of the speakers who talked about reliability, Myra Torres, from CALCE at the University of Maryland, said that users of cell phones expect about the same level of reliability that you'd expect from a 747.
Joe: CALCE has done some really interesting work in that space, actually. What they're working on is prognostics, as opposed to diagnostics, where you get some sort of feedback in advance of your system catastrophically failing. You'll actually be able to know its health, like--as she put it--going in to see your doctor and getting a little bit of a diagnosis in advance, or prognosis of what you've got going on. What else did you find interesting here so far?
Andy: I keep thinking about the NEC supercomputer with a flip chip that has 8,900 I/Os.
Joe: Jan Vardaman mentioned that. It's NEC's supercomputer board, a build-up board, and they're dong a flip chip on the center of the board. Which, to me, is logical. Technologically, it's a big challenge, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. They can make it work, and God bless and God speed.
Andy: We're learning about a lot of really cool technologies. And it's great to see the technologists from around the world coming together, and you find out that they all have the same issues and they're all trying to get something to market before everyone else.
Joe: Sure. Well, I certainly appreciate you sitting down and sharing your thoughts with me. We'll be talking more in the future.
Andy: Sure, Joe. Any time.