Fort Worth, TX. “Moore’s Law is Done and Heterogeneous Integration is Taking Off”—that was the title of a presentation developed by Dave Armstrong and Bill Bottoms and delivered Wednesday by Armstrong at an International Test Conference session on the topic. Introducing the Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR), Armstrong said, “Roadmapping is an incredible way to put the pieces together” by gathering experts in one forum. Those experts represent areas from lithography to probing, they know the current limits of their technologies, and they can provide a good understanding of where industry is moving. Armstrong of Advantest provides ATE and related expertise.
Industry has been following Moore’s Law for 51 years, he said, and the International Technology Map for Semiconductors (ITRS) has been following it for 23 years. But traditional CMOS scaling is running into economic and technology limits, which will become severe by 2025. “To me, the end of Moore’s Law is certain,” Armstrong said. “Heterogeneous integration is poised to drive the industry forward.”
The HIR team kicked off earlier this year. He said the HIR team’s test working group includes more than 70 professionals (including Armstrong, Marc Loranger, and Bill Ecklow, all of whom provided contributions to Wednesday’s session) representing more than 100 companies. The test group has 13 subcommittees, focusing on topics including yield learning, RF, probe cards, test sockets, adaptive test, high-speed I/O, memory, analog/mixed-signal, DFT, handlers, adaptive test, and specialty devices like MEMS.
Armstrong noted many challenges ahead, not the least of which is probe pitch. He cited Linley Group data showing that probe pitch has plateaued. He asked, does that represent a brick wall, or an opportunity?
It certainly presents a challenge. “The new future is heterogeneous integration,” he said, adding that this future will see low product cost, higher complexity, and faster time to market. But heterogeneously integrated devices will be much harder to test.
Heterogeneous integration, he said, enables fast time to market through a building-block approach that puts heterogeneous components together on an interposer. To accommodate this approach, test has to change, he said.
He noted that the IoT is driving global data-center traffic—from die to die, server blade to server blade, and across the world. Issues to be addressed include latency, power, and cost as traffic increases. Heterogeneous integration will need to support short signal lengths and provide for optical interconnects. The optical portion presents its own challenges—optical I/O test, jitter, fixture bandwidth, DFT techniques, skew detection, and modulation schemes.
Further, he said, it’s not sufficient to test photonics devices just prior to shipping. Wavelengths may drift, for example, necessitating continuous test, intelligent redundancy, and dynamic self-repair.
In any event, heterogeneous integration is enabling a wide array of products—from glucose-sensing wireless-communication-enabled contact lenses to Internet-enabled frying pans. The number of IoT products with diverse packaging is unlimited, Armstrong said. Other possibilities include robotic drug-delivery devices and sensors buried within the concrete of bridges.
And finally, security is a critical issue that must be addressed through hardware and software.
“Product requirements will morph and change,” he concluded. “Testing challenges are massive. Only with careful analysis of technical direction and application requirements can we truly anticipate what’s coming.”
Armstrong throughout his presentation asked for volunteers to support the HIR effort and circulated a signup sheet. For more information, visit http://cpmt.ieee.org/technology/heterogeneous-integration-roadmap.html.
