Accelerating the research and development of semiconductor supply chain in the era of 3D-IC

Recently, Tang Heming, general manager of the Sun Moonlight Group, which promotes 2.5 and 3D IC technology and is very active, said that the semiconductor supply chain has shown signs of mobilization in the past year, and the resources of related major R&D facilities have increased significantly. In order to define the interface standard between memory and logic IC (Wie-I/O Memorybus) is also expected to be established before the end of the year. He expects 2013 to be the first year of mass production of 3D ICs. For 2.5 and 3D ICs, Tang Heming said that the recent semiconductor supply chain has accelerated its investment in R&D. Many manufacturers have joined the research and development supply chain, including fabs and packaging and testing plants. The research and development costs at 3IC are higher than those of 2010. Increase a lot, this is a good thing to develop 3D IC industry chain. He predicted that 3D ICs should be expected to see mass production in 2013 and should be regarded as the first year of mass production of 3D ICs.

Tang Heming frankly stated that there are still many difficulties and challenges for 3D ICs that remain to be solved. For example, the cooperation among IC design, foundry, packaging and testing, systems, etc., needs to be strengthened and integrated; for example, in the aspect of testing, how can manufacturers improve their quality? This is also the key to the test yield of the Known Gooie. The entire semiconductor supply chain must solve these problems together. For the packaging and testing industry, there has been a major breakthrough in the cooperation between the manufacturers of the front and rear segment, namely the development of the Wie-I/O Memorybus.

Tang Heming stated that the 3D IC era is focused on System-in-Package (SiP) stacking various ICs of different nature on the carrier board, such as logic! IC and memory, how these two kinds of heterogeneous IC communicate with each other, which must define the standard, and then promote Wie-I/O Memorybus. This standard has been jointly developed by various semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel, Qualcomm, Elpia, Samsung Electronics, and Sun Moonlight, and is expected to be completed before the end of the year. Once the standard is established, there will be certainty for each production, which will help accelerate the mass production of 3D IC packaging. It is worth noting that Sun Moonlight actively promoted the development of the standard and made Taiwan also play an important role in the formulation of major standards.

Tang Heming said that 3D ICs and system-on-chip (SoC) technologies complement each other, and system functions are integrated through 3D ICs. ICs will have higher density and efficiency, consume less power, and comply with environmental protection requirements. 3D IC applications will be based on mobile phones and tablet PCs, while 2.5 ICs will have larger die sizes, so their applications will start with notebooks and desktop computers. The company is actively integrating technology with the semiconductor industry supply chain and is expected to introduce 3D IC mass production in 2013 and will be used in mobile phones and PCs.