System integration is moving forward. Denser and high performing systems require advanced packaging, assembly, and test players to move closer together, and they mandatorily need to be involved in the collaboration along the full supply and value chain from the early beginning of new projects. The package is becoming a functional part of the product and with it a differentiator for the product’s success in the market.
Europe has a strong automotive industry, and that increasingly calls for excellence in automotive electronics. You cannot think about this without thinking about advanced packaging, assembly, and test. Therefore, the Advanced Packaging Conference (APC) committee, chaired by Steffen Kroehnert of NANIUM, Portugal, and Andy Longford of PandA Europe, United Kingdom, put together a great program themed “The Balancing Act between Consumer and Harsh Environment packaging” with 17 high-quality presentations for this year’s conference.
The APC will take place from October 25-26, 2016, in conjunction with SEMICON Europa in Grenoble, France, which is the largest microelectronics event in Europe. From this year forward, the APC committee will be reinforced by test experts. Test topics interacting with advanced packaging technology will be covered in a separate session as part of APC. The conference will focus on the current industry needs and the transfer of solutions into manufacturing, rather than on basic research results.
World-leading specialists in their fields will present the four keynotes. Jan Vardaman, President of TechSearch International from Austin, Texas, USA, will open the “Market and Solutions” session, and will set the stage with her talk “Market Drivers and Packaging Trends for Automotive: Leveraging Mobile Device Packaging Technology?”.
The second session “Technology and Modeling” will be opened by Gabriele Ernst, Engineering Director at Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany, with her keynote “Rapid Introduction of New Technologies for Future Automotive Systems”.
Session three, the “Testing and Qualification” session, will start with the keynote “Semiconductor Test: A Moving Target Cost, A Changing Landscape” by Cedric Mayor, CTO of Presto Engineering, France.
The fourth and final session of the conference will deal with “Application and Processes”, and will commence with another exciting keynote, given by Tobias Helbig, Senior Director CTO Innovation Management & Programs at NXP Semiconductors. He will talk about “Application-driven Challenges in Automotive Packaging”.
Advanced packaging technology development has always been driven by the consumer market, namely by mobile and wireless communication applications, always focused on finding solutions for the key critical aspects of packaging: performance, form factor, and cost. Years after the introduction of new advanced packaging technologies, typically after a certain level of maturity and wider acceptance has been achieved, other markets such as industrial, medical and healthcare, automotive and even military and aerospace re-use those technologies, adapted to their typically higher requirements. Why did they do so, and do so, even more, today? Because they are under the same continuously increasing pressure to address that critical triad of packaging: performance, form-factor, and Cost. Will automotive packaging, with its specific performance and reliability requirements, be available for consumer packaging cost? Possible or not? Join us at the conference, and you will witness industry efforts to make it happen.
