The undisputed Jewel of IC packaging conferences, the ECTC (Electronic Component Technology Conference) took place this past week in Las Vegas with 1300+ attendees, 95 exhibitors and IFTLE in attendance.
Over 600 submitted abstracts resulted in ~300 presentations (verbal and poster) and the highest rejection rate in the industry. Key to this years conference success were Program Chair Beth Keser from Qualcomm, General Chair Wolfgang Sauter from IBM, and Assistant Program Chair Alan Huffman from RTI Int.
Beth Keser, Wolfgang Sauter and Alan Huffman from the ECTC Program Committee
John Lau Wins IEEE CPMT Field Award
Awards are an important part of this yearly conference and the pre-imminent packaging award is IEEE CPMT’s (Component, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology Society) “Field Award” Past years winners include Rao Tummala (packaging), Yutaka Tsukada (underfilling), Paul Totta (bumping); Herb Reichl (packaging); George Harman (wire bonding), Dimitri Grabbe (connectors) and CP Wong (polymers).
This years winner Is Dr. John Lau, currently a Fellow at ITRI. Best known for his extensive work in solder joint reliability, anyone who has a few packaging books on their bookshelf probably has one of Johns. One of my personal favorites is his chip on Board volume published in the 1990’s. If I am remembering correctly, John once told me that his daughter Judy designed the cover.
Bill Chen (ASE), CP Wong ( GaTech ), John Lau ,wife Theresa and daughter Judy Celebrate his award
Other major award winners included:
Outstanding Contribution Award – Rolf Aschenbrenner, Fraunhoffer IZM Berlin
Outstanding Sustained Technical Contributions Award – Dongkai Shangguan, National Center for Advanced Packaging – China
Exceptional Technical Achievement Award – Yong Liu, Fairchild
Electronic Manufacturing Technology Award – Louie Huang, ASE
This years event was also loaded with panel sessions including Broadcom’s Sam Karikalan chairing “The role of Wafer Foundries in the Next Gen Packaging”; CPMT President Ricky Lee of Hong Kong Univ of Science and Techniology, chairing “LEDs for Solid State Lighting” ( Lester Lightbulb was seen in tears after he was informed that he was not selected to speak on this panel ); Amkor’s Lou Nichols chairing “Packaging Challenges Across the Wireless Supply Chain” and Fujitsu’s Yocouchi-san chairing “Low Loss Dielectrics for High Frequency and High Bandwidth”
Without question the leading theme at this years conference was once again 3DIC. I counted at least 12 sessions and numerous posters that dealt with the various components of 2.5 and 3D technology.
3DIC Status
There were no major commercial announcements or major technology advances in 3DIC. Presentations tended to show slow steady movement forward for both 3D and advanced packaging in general. Over the next few weeks we will discuss this further and will take a look at some of the more interesting presentations at this years ECTC.
IFTLE also thanks Cornelia Tsang of IBM for guarding his seat during the ECTC gala celebration ! (inside joke)
For all the latest on Advanced Packaging and 3DIC stay linked to IFTLEâ??¦â??¦â??¦â??¦



