Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1517668
110 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2024 I had the great pleasure of recently attending the National Institute of Standards and Tech- nology's (NIST) CHIPS R&D Chiplets Inter- faces Technical Standards Workshop. e pur- pose was to bring together technical experts across industry and academia to deliberate one of the most pressing technological matters of 2024: chip packaging standards. In the semiconductor industry, monolithic chips are widely employed. Herein, all ele- ments of the integrated circuit (e.g., transis- tors, resistors, interconnects, etc.) are built onto a single chip. By incorporating all aspects of the integrated circuit onto the same chip, the monolithic design or "system on chip" (SoC) simplifies design and can allow for high performance. Meanwhile, "system in package" (SiP) offers a different approach. SiPs employ chiplets where segmented processors (CPU, GPU, memory, etc.) are manufactured as sep- arate chips, and then assembled onto an inter- poser at a tight pitch (or stacked on top of each other) to form a single, cohesive system. e benefit is that SiP opens an entirely new world for semiconductor chip design: the abil- ity to mix and match specialized chiplets onto a single package. is allows for greater selec- tion and integration of components for cus- tomized applications. SiP also offers a faster time-to-market than SoC because designers can select pre-existing components and inte- grate them into a single package, streamlining the design process. But while the concept of SiP is not new to the packaging world, most companies that design products with proprietary interfaces The Importance of Standards for the Chip Packaging Industry Material Insight by Preeya Kuray, Ph.D.