Electronic packaging research and education in the 21st century at PRC

The next generation of packaging must be consistent with both semiconductors and systems. The packages in the past have been mostly passive containers for semiconductors. Given the needs for extremely compact and ultra low-cost electronic systems of the 21st century and given the wafer fabrication costs that are $3-5B per plant, this paper looks at what packaging should be in the 21st century. Any packaging technology should also be built upon the learning of current state-of-the-art packaging. Highly integrated and low-cost packaging as a single level and single component that is capable of improving performance, reducing cost and size by about an order of magnitude in each case is proposed. Similar advances are also proposed in electronic packaging education for the 21st century, introducing packaging at pre-college level and providing a system-level view at undergraduate and graduate levels.