A forecast on the future of hybrid wafer scale integration technology

Any detailed discussion of high performance packaging for the next generation electronics systems must include both hybrid wafer scale integration (H-WSI) and monolithic wafer scale integration (M-WSI). A H-WSI circuit is a multichip module (MCM) that contains 20-50 chips with at least ten times the maximum functionality that can be readily achieved in one complex chip. A M-WSI circuit is a monolithic semiconductor (silicon generally) chip that contains a large number of cells that in total contain at least ten times the functionality that can be readily achieved in one complex chip. These devices could be called a system on a chip. This paper describes the driving forces behind WSI technologies, defines where the H-WSI technologies are today and forecasts where these are likely to evolve to in the future