Let’s Start the ESD Alliance - 3D InCites Conversation!

This post kicks off what I expect to be a regular series of blogs that will help tie the system design community to manufacturing or, more specifically, your community tackling 3D integration. I accepted Francoise’s invitation to become a 3D InCites blogger because the ESD Alliance, where I serve as executive director, and you, her readers, can work cooperatively to bring the two communities together through conversation and understanding.

Let me begin by describing the ESD Alliance’s mission. We support the system design ecosystem, the foundation of the worldwide semiconductor and electronic products markets. As well, we are a SEMI Technology Community, a small but mighty spoke in the $2-trillion global electronic products market hub. You may remember us as the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Consortium, a group that supported design automation tools, technologies, and methodologies. EDA remains a foundational element of our charter along with the addition of other areas, including IP, embedded software, services, and cloud-based design.

While design is where all electronic systems and products begin, other technologies such as 3D IC design and various alternative packaging solutions are as important and critical for system scaling, an area not as familiar to the system design ecosystem. By opening the channel of communication, we can offer our members insight into ways to grow and expand their businesses into automation, modeling, and manufacturing. They will increase their understanding of the developments in integration and packaging of multi-die devices using a variety of different advanced packaging technologies.

Our association with SEMI and our mission can facilitate greater communication between our communities to prepare both for the major shifts and changes rippling through the semiconductor market. We can help demystify system design and look to you for help deciphering modeling, analysis/verification, manufacturing, and test to unlock the potential for us to work together on new integration solutions. Big growth markets such as mobile, automotive, MedTech, and IoT need heterogeneous functions—digital, analog, mixed-signal, sensor, and memory functions, for instance— to interact with the world around them. All need to be integrated into one system. And that system is complex, high performance, low power with a small footprint able to fit in the package and interconnect with other devices and sensors in the system. Experts in both disciplines will benefit from an open channel of communication.

Our two communities have plenty in common and both work to the same goal: getting an electronic product to market on time and within budget. Let’s start the conversation! In future blogs, I’ll describe our various technical initiatives and encourage your participation, feedback and ideas.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to learn more about the ESD Alliance. You can do that by visiting the ESD Alliance website or contact me at bsmith@semi.org.