3D technology applications market trends & key challenges

Semiconductor industry, for more than four decades, has rigorously followed Moore's Law in scaling down the CMOS technologies. Three-dimensional (3D) technology using Through Silicon Via (TSV) interconnect is one of the emerging options, considered today as a new paradigm for the semiconductor industry, since it will drive evolution for packages for the coming decades. The industry has enthusiastically been waiting for mass production of 3D ICs. Although some small level of production has already been reported, the adoption rate in high volume manufacturing (HVM) is still low due to unresolved challenges that the industry still needs to address. Process technology is not fully mature, there are still many challenges in bonding and de-bonding, testing as well as thermal management that have to be overcome. Furthermore, design tools have to be fully released to enable proper 3D integration design. Looking at the time to market it is foreseen that devices such as the Hybrid Memory Cube, combining high-speed logic with a multiple stacks of TSV bonded memories, will come into high volume production in the next couple of years. This will change the world of the memory market and will significantly speed up the adoption of 3D technologies.