Talk title

Heterogenous Integration as the New Scaling Opportunity and Building a UK Capability.

Presentation

There are a number of challenges within the electronics and semiconductor industries that are leading to disruptive technology changes to the way systems have traditionally been designed and fabricated. We are still demanding, ever smaller, energy-efficient, more capable and lower cost systems. Rather than aggregating more and more IP blocks into a single System on Chip, with exploding verification costs, systems are being assembled from die, called ‘chiplets’, that contain specific IP blocks. A compute processor, historically fabricated as a single die, may now consist of many die assembled from different foundries and technology nodes. Conventional connection of IP blocks by on chip buses or PCB tracks are now being handled by fine geometry interposers or 3D stacking.

These disruptive changes are reshaping the traditional design practice through to manufacturing supply pathways. IP companies are staring to sell silicon, wafer fabs are investing in die packaging, PCB assemblers are becoming full Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test houses. In this presentation we will highlight at a technical level the challenges and opportunities for the UK and the role the CHIMES2 Innovation and Knowledge Centre will have in supporting the transition of the UK electronics systems community to these new technologies.

Biography

John leads numerous industrially relevant activities within Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He co-leads on one of four UK semiconductor Innovation and Knowledge Centres, CHIMES2, focused on design of electronic systems using Chiplets, Heterogenous Integration and Advanced Packaging. John heads an experienced team of semiconductor fabrication engineers dedicated to semiconductor processing on behalf of industry using the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, a state-of-the-art 200 mm (8”) wafer fab. The team has fabricated a wide variety of devices, microLEDs, MEMS, Microfluidics, Quantum traps, forms of sensors to name just a few and undertakes processing from single research samples to batch pilot production.

John leads SoC Labs, a global academic community of over 140 universities utilizing the arm ecosystem to support community driven hardware design. John is active in developing re-usable SoC reference designs and fabrication flows via industrial foundry services. He leads a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology funded programme to address UK workforce development challenges, including the gap between core foundation skills provided by traditional academic teaching and practical application skills needed by industry. It’s aim to develop the next generation of UK design engineers crucial to developing our future chips and semiconductor technologies.