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8 SMT Magazine • June 2015 The printed circuit board assembly land- scape is changing rapidly, driven primarily by handheld consumer devices. The highest-vol- ume PCBA is the cell phone, which is under- standable given that virtually everyone equips themselves with at least one such device to stay connected these days. More and more consum- ers want data connectivity, not just voice, and that has pushed telecommunication compa- nies to switch from voice to data networks. In the process, server farms and data centers have sprung up around the world to support the data volume generated by the ever growing list of cell phone applications. Cell phones and portable devices have now become the driver for electronics innovation and technology development. As an example, the need to stay connected every second of the day to instantly receive the latest news or up- by Mark Lau KeySighT TechnologieS inc. dates has prompted industry to pursue a way to bump up the cell phone's speed and turn down its power for longer battery life. Likewise, con- sumers' insatiable demand for feature-packed, thin, lightweight, and energy-efficient devices is spurring the need for HDI technology. It's an innovation that is now rippling through the electronics ecosystem—from semiconductor in- tegrated circuits (ICs) to PCBs and SMT equip- ment. An Industry Perspective The semiconductor industry rose to the "more than Moore" challenge, downsizing 28 nm silicon nodes to 22 nm and now 14 nm to increase the speed and lower the energy con- sumption (watts) of devices. The primary ben- eficiary of this silicon node technology is the central processor unit, which also exists in the micro controller unit and when integrated with other electronic functions becomes system-on- chip (SoC). Innovations like through-silicon via (TSV) have enabled the creation of 3D integrat- Feature