The IEEE International Conference on 3D System Integration (3DIC) was held in Kinsale, Cork, Ireland in December, 2014. The three day conference covered all 3D IC topics, including 3D process technology, materials, equipment, circuits technology, design methodology, thermal effects and applications. The 2014 conference was very successful with a great atmosphere with vigorous discussion and lots of opportunities for interactions. Even the sun made an appearance throughout the conference.
Alan Mathewson and Cian O’Murchu, from Tyndall National Institute, were the local organizers. Additionally, the 3DIC organizing committee was well represented by European, Asian and American chairs (left to right): Mitsumasa Koyanagi (Tohoku U.), Paul Franzon (NCSU), Peter Ramm (Fraunhofer-EMFT), Bob Patti (Tezzaron), Alan Mathewson (Tyndall), Pascal Vivet (CEA).
The best paper award went to Qualcomm with a paper entitled “Thermal Implications of Mobile 3D ICs” by Mehdi Saeidi, Kambiz Samadi, Arpit Mittal and Rajat Mittal.
The best poster award went to Ricky Anthony, Tyndall, with a poster entitled “Advanced Processing for High Efficiency Inductors for 2.5D/3D Power Supply in Package”.
There were seven invited talks during the conference that addressed the broad spectrum of activities across the firmament of 3D IC.
Thibault Buisson (Yole Développement) provided a very interesting overview of the current and future markets for 3D IC. Denis Dutoit (CEA) spoke about the architectural and design challenges of 3D systems integration and prepared the ground for the talk by John Goodacre on the Euroserver project, which is developing a cost-effective and flexible ARM-based scalable system architecture that is suitable across multiple markets. Brendan Farley (Xilinx Ireland) provided an excellent overview of the company’s strategy for the use of 3D in terms of high-yield and high-reliability products. Steve Moffatt talked about the future of Moore´s law and Applied Materials’ perspective on 3D IC. Peter Schneider (Fraunhofer-IIS) presented an overview on the design tools and flow for the creation and optimization of 3D systems. Pascal Couderc from 3D PLUS gave an interesting talk on the company’s pioneering works on embedded technologies. 13 years ago they made some WDoD modules “for a space application” and the famous comet pictures from ROSETTA Nov/2014 were enabled right by these devices. Kafil Mahmood (Tyndall) presented an innovative and very promising fine-pitch interconnect technology with low thermal impedances based on nanowire ACFs (partly funded in the e-BRAINS project).
The above papers provide a flavor of the types of papers presented at 3DIC 2014, and for those with further interest in this, many more interesting papers can be found in the conference proceedings (which will be available soon from IEEEXplore). We would like to thank all of the authors for their efforts in preparing extended manuscripts of their conference presentations. Hopefully we will see many of you in September at 3DIC 2015 in Sendai, Japan. ~ Alan Mathewson, Cian O´Murchu and Peter Ramm
