Future of Electronics: Devices, Packaging and Systems

Speaker: Rao R. Tummala
Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: Semiconductor and systems landscape is changing dramatically. ICs, on one hand, for the most part, are becoming commodities, providing much lower profit margins than ever before, leading to industry consolidation to less than five companies within the next decade, worldwide. The cost and complexity of transistor scaling with the most leading edge ICs such as for ultra-high end cloud, cognitive and quantum computing are growing exponentially. The main challenges in next generation ICs are leakage, on the front end and RC delays, on the back-end. There is no longer a cost reduction as the next node is introduced with higher transistor density. The driving engines for electronic systems, on the other hand, are also changing dramatically to smart, wearable, wireless, healthcare, wireless networks and new era of self- driving and electric cars that think and drive better than humans, requiring device, packaging and computing paradigms with an entirely different vision and strategy than transistor scaling alone.  Most of these systems are small to ultra-small systems and yet must perform dozens of functions that include high speed digital, 5G and millimeter wave, health-care, wireless sensors and networks and camera, radar and many others. Packaging is now viewed as enabling better devices and better systems unlike in the past.

Biography:  Prof. Rao Tummala is a Distinguished and Endowed Chair Professor at Georgia Tech.  He is well-known as an industrial technologist, technology pioneer, and educator.  Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he was an IBM Fellow, pioneering such major technologies as the industry’s first plasma display and industry’s first 100 chip MCM with leading-edge RDL, flipchip and, liquid cooling now called 2.5D.  He is the father of LTCC and System-on-Package (SOP) technologies. As an educator, Prof. Tummala was instrumental in setting up the largest Academic Center in SOP vision for Electronic Systems funded by NSF at Georgia Tech, producing more than 1500 engineers, with an integrated approach to research, education and industry collaborations with more than 100 companies in US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. He received many industry, academic and Professional Society awards including Distinguished Alumni of Illinois, Indian Institute of Science and received the highest Faculty award at Georgia Tech – The Distinguished Faculty.  He has published 800 technical papers and invented many technologies that resulted in over 100 patents, wrote the first modern textbook in packaging, Microelectronics Packaging Handbook (1988); wrote the first undergrad textbook, Fundamentals of Microsystem Packaging (2001); and the first book introducing the concept of SOP, Introduction to System-on-Package (2006).  He was past President of IEEE CPMT, IEEE Fellow and member of NAE in US and India.

For more information, contact Prof. Subramanian Iyer (s.s.iyer@ucla.edu)

Date/Time:
Date(s) - May 09, 2018
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Location:
E-IV Maxwell Room #57-124
420 Westwood Plaza - 5th Flr. , Los Angeles CA 90095