Record Attendance at the 2024 IEEE Electronic Components Technology Conference in Denver

02 July, 2024 | Editorial Team

Record Attendance at the 2024 IEEE Electronic Components Technology Conference in Denver 712370

The 74th annual edition of the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), held in late May in Denver, CO, had record attendance, a record number of paper submissions and presentations, record international participation, and a sold-out exhibition hall, cementing its status as the premier global event for unveiling, discussing and exhibiting the latest advancements in microelectronics packaging and component science and technology,

“This year’s ECTC was also the most comprehensive edition in the long history of this conference, with papers and sessions covering a broad range of advanced packaging and related topics, and many panels of experts who explored key workforce and other industry issues,” said Karlheinz Bock, General Chair of ECTC 2024. “Also, with record attendance, the networking opportunities were superb.” The ECTC is now a 4-day conference with special sessions of invited panels and the Hereogeneous Integration Roadmap presentations on Tuesday, and the Technical sessions the following 3 days. The key technologies discussed at the conference were hybrid bonding, wafer-level packaging and Si Photonics.

Here are some key conference statistics for ECTC 2024:

Over 2000 attendees is the highest number in the conference’s 74-year history
The number of abstracts submitted was the highest ever (704), as were the 389 technical papers presented in 36 oral and 5 interactive presentation sessions, including one dedicated to students.
40 paper presentations attracted more than 200 attendees
16 professional development courses were attended by nearly 500 participants
There were speakers from 22 countries all around the world
ECTC 2024 had a record level of industry support, with 47 corporate sponsors and 51 sponsorships
There were 128 booths in the exhibit hall

Keynote Talk

The ECTC 2024 keynote presentation was given by Prof. Keren Bergman, the Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, where she also serves as the Faculty Director of the Columbia Nano Initiative. In her talk, ”Petascale Photonic Chip Connectivity for Energy Efficient AI Computing,” Prof. Bergman discussed multi-chip packaging challenges, as well as approaches for leveraging dense wavelength-division multiplexing photonic I/O that can scale to realize petabit/s chip escape bandwidths with sub-picojoule/bit energy consumption. She focused on the immediate tasks and challenges that the packaging community can now tackle to make this revolutionary technology a reality.

Special Sessions

The keynote talk was one of 10 Special Sessions at ECTC 2024, in which industry experts discussed technology status, roadmaps, workforce and other issues of critical industry importance. There were as follows:

2024 IEEE EPS President’s Panel Session on Workforce The special session focused on “Challenges in Education and Workforce Development in the New Chips Economy.” It highlighted critical workforce challenges and showcased potential solutions, and was co-chaired by IEEE EPS president Patrick Thompson, Texas Instruments; Mark Poliks, Binghamton University; Jeff Suhling, Auburn University; and Kitty Pearsall, Boss Precision Inc. Speakers were John Oakley, Semiconductor Research Corporation; Toni Mattila, Business Finland; Robert Geer, SUNY Polytechnic University; Wenhui Zhu, Central South University (pre-recorded), and Jim Wieser, Texas Instruments.
2024 ECTC Special Session on Industry-Government Co-Investments: The special session focused on “Exploring the Impact of Industry-Government Co-Investments for the Advanced Electronics Sector in North America, Asia and Europe." It was co-chaired by Przemyslaw Gromala, Robert Bosch GmbH; and Erik Jung, Fraunhofer IZM (excused). Speakers were Elisabeth Steimetz, EPoSS, Europe; Rao Tummala, Advisor to the Government of India; Eric Lin, CHIPS R&D, USA; David Lynch, CMC Microsystems, Canada; and Kwang-Seong Choi, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Korea. The panelists described the differing goals, frameworks, challenges and achievements of their efforts to increase advanced packaging technology and infrastructure development in their respective geographies.
2024 ECTC Special Session on Metrology: The panel explored the topic, “Challenges and Opportunities in Advancing Metrology for Next-Generation Microelectronics.” The session was co-chaired by Ran Tao, NIST, and Benson Chan, Binghamton University, and was moderated by Jan Vardaman, TechSearch International. The speakers were Paul Hale, NIST; Gaurang Choksi, Intel; Zhihua Zou, TSMC; CP Hung, ASE; and Chet Lenox, KLA Corporation.
2024 ECTC Special Session on Thermal Management for AI: This session focused on, Efficient and Innovative Thermal Management for Power Hungry AI/ML Applications: Challenges and Opportunities.” It was co-chaired by Zhi Yang, Groq, and Sevket Yuruker, Tesla. The speakers were Ki Wook Jung, Samsung; Igor Arsovski, Groq; Mudasir Ahmad, Google; Tiwei Wei, Purdue University; and Christopher Ortiz, Ansys.
2024 ECTC Special Session on RF Packaging for above 100 GHz : This special session focused on the topic, “RF Packaging for Communication and Sensing Applications above 100 GHz – Technologies, Design Challenges and Emerging Solutions.” The session was co-chaired by Maciej Wojnowski, Infineon Technologies AG, and Ivan Ndip, Fraunhofer IZM/Brandenburg University of Technology. The speakers were Swaminathan Sankaran, Texas Instruments; Martin Letz, Schott AG; Madhavan Swaminathan, Penn State University; and Uwe Maass, Fraunhofer IZM.
2024 ECTC Young Professionals Networking Event: The session was co-chaired by Aakrati Jain, IBM; Rui Chen Eastern Michigan University; and Zhangming Zhou, Auburn University. The special session and networking reception were tailored specifically for young professionals, including current graduate students, and were crafted with their needs in mind. Interactions with senior EPS members and professionals were facilitated with a series of active and engaging activities.
2024 IEEE EPS Seminar on Substrates for Chiplets: This special session explored the topic, “Substrate-Scaling Challenges in Chiplet Integration.” It session was co-chaired by Takashi Hisada, Rapidus Corporation and Yasumitsu Orii, Rapidus Corporation (excused), and was co-moderated by Rich Graff, Marvell. The speakers were Gang Duan, Intel; Kinya Ichikawa, TSMC; Kenneth Larsen, Synopsys; Masahisa Ose, Resonac; Harish Penmenthsa, Applied Materials; Yu-Po Wang, SPIL; and Rozalia Beica, LQDX.
2024 ECTC/iTherm Diversity and Career Growth Panel and Reception: This special event was co-chaired by Cristina Amon, University of Toronto, for iTherm, and Vidya Jarayam, Intel, for ECTC. The speakers were Ramona Prioleau, CHIPS; Allyson Stewart, Marvell; Al Ortega, Villanova University; Tina Herrera, NREL; and Ravi Mahajan, Intel. The talks focused on, “Effective Practices to Attract, Promote and Retain a Diverse Workforce.”
2024 ECTC Plenary Session on Future of Semiconductor Industry: For the first time at ECTC, a competition among start-up companies took place, with a jury deciding the winner and with questions from the audience encouraged. The overall topic was, “Future of the Semiconductor Industry, Emerging Start-ups and Material Innovations in Advanced Packaging.” The session was co-chaired by Rozalia Beica, LQDX, and Farhang Yazdani, BroadPak, and the Chair of the Jury Panel, Jeffrey Perkins, Yole Group. Presentations were made by start-up speakers Victor Chiriac, Global Cooling Technology Group; Wayne Rickard, Terecircuits; and Luc Beauvillier, Thintronics. The winner of the competition was Terecircuits. Awards were contributed by Yole Group and Kiterocket.

Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap Workshop

A Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR) Workshop, sponsored by the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society and co-chaired by Bill Chen, ASE and Ravi Mahajan, Intel, took place once again as a full-day workshop, with a packed audience that demonstrated the increasing importance of this topic to the industry.

ECTC Executive committee: Karlheinz Bock, General Chair (TU Dresden), Michael Mayer, Program Chair (University of Waterloo), Przemyslaw Gromala, Assistant Program Chair (Robert Bosch GmbH), Florian Herrault, Vice-General Chair (PseudolithIC, Inc.), and Bora Baloglu, IT Coordinator (Intel Corporation).