Papers offered a mix of today’s problems and tomorrow’s promises. The flip chip and copper/low-k tracks focused primarily on near-term challenges. Flip chip highlighted the continuing lead-free concerns, with many papers on lead-free bumping and reliability, novel underfill materials, and compatibility. The copper/low-k track covered the processes from wire bonding and bumping to reliability and failure analysis.

The opto-electronics and MEMS sessions focused on continuing developments. Polymers continue to find increasing applications in opto coatings and packages. New packaging approaches keep MEMS in the mainstream of wafer bonding, and increasingly in near-hermetic packaging.

(March 31, 2006) Santa Clara, CA &#8212 Rio Design Automation Inc., an electronic design automation (EDA) company, announced that Azul Systems Inc., developers of a network attached processing solution, has renewed their RioMagic license. Rio Design’s flagship EDA software tool, introduced earlier this year, was originally chosen to design Azul’s second-generation processor, the Azul Vega 2. Azul claims this processor is the world’s largest multicore single chip packed with 48 cores per silicon die. Azul will use up to 16 of them to build 768-way systems.