A Survey of High Density Packaging for High Performance Computing System

In this age of modem warfare when precision-smart weapons and avionics are in high demand, there is a need for a dramatic increase of throughput density, defined loosely as the computation throughput per unit volumeweight of the electronic system. To date, the main approach has been the monolithic wafer scale integration MWSI approach. Over the last decades, monolithic integration circuit IC density has increased by several orders of magnitudes, and the monolithic IC area by 10 times to approach the dimension of the semiconductor wafer. The growth trends for both circuit density and IC area have leveled off significantly. Hybrid wafer scale integration HWSI overcomes many of these limitations. This approach includes techniques to put monolithic chips very close together while maintaining or improving inter-chip signal quality. Major portions of the report survey techniques, performance and availability of HWSI technologies. The survey finds that HWSI can provide from one to two orders of magnitude of increase to the throughput density of current systems. There is a major trend in the industry to invest in this technology, and it is expected to be available to the industrial as well as military systems at competitive prices within a few years.