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We began this research in 1993 with a proposal to the Radio Service quad-band cell phones to gain about a 40 Rao Tummala at U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for an Engineering percent reduction in board area. The module contains all the 404-894-9097 or Research Center, which NSF then funded for 11 years. We critical cell phone functions: RF processing, base-band sig- rao.tummala@ also have received funding from the Georgia Research nal processing, power management, and audio and memory ece.gatech.edu

Alliance and 167 electronics companies from the United sections. Not only does the module free up space for new PHOTO ILLUSTRA States, Europe and Asia. We have raised about $200 million features, it is also the foundation around which new cell to carry out SOP research and educate more than 500 tech- phones with different shapes and features can be rapidly nical leaders. We have also made packaging and systems designed. The company reports it has shipped more than 20 TION BY BRIAN CHRISTIE education at Georgia Tech an academic subject for the first million SOP-based phones. time. At Georgia Tech, we believe the market for multifunc- We are not alone anymore in this SOP endeavor. tional products and the advantages of designing chips Researchers worldwide are using SOP to combine diverse and system packages concurrently are so compelling technologies in new, unusual and cost-effective ways. that companies simply will have to design and fabricate Everyone is after ultra-compact products built with everything together. And as the SOP concept takes off, combinations of digital, analog, radio-frequency (RF), design-tool and fabrication houses will turn their attention ABOVE: System-on- optoelectronic and sensing technologies. to developing powerful programs for concurrent design and package technology For more than 40 years, circuit designers have counted advanced manufacturing, just as they did in the past decade developed at Georgia Tech will transform on the steady increase in transistor density in their pursuit when SOC technology was in its infancy. handheld electronic of convergence. For example, engineers at Texas Instruments @ Read online at: gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/ devices into small, are building entire signal-processing subsystems with reshor/rh-f06/SOP.html multi- or mega- diverse functions on a chip of silicon — a system-on-chip, function systems that combine computing, or SOC, as it's called. The SOP from Georgia Tech offers an Parts of this article were excerpted from “Moore's Law Meets Its Match” by Rao Tummala,IEEE Spectrum Magazine, June 2006. It is available communication and alternative way to accomplish the same goal at a lower cost on the Web at: www.spectrum.ieee.org/ jun06/3649 consumer electronics. and faster time to market. Unlike SOC, we're not forced to use dissimilar technologies that take time to design and fab- ricate. We need not compromise speed, cost, time to market LEFT: Professor Rao or reliability, as in the SOC approach. Tummala is the Since we began developing the SOP concept in 1993, director of the we have worked with 167 electronics companies from the Georgia Tech United States, Japan, Korea and Europe. Included are Microsystems Packaging Research Advanced Micro Devices, Asahi, Ericsson, Ford, Hitachi, Center, which IBM, Intel, Matsushita, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Samsung, Y MEEK developed system-on- Sony and Texas Instruments. In addition, more than 70 package technology that represents the

researchers have visited our center to study SOP and its PHOTO BY GAR “Second Law of application to their diverse requirements. Electronics.” So far, at least 50 companies have taken parts of our technology and applied them to their automotive, computer, consumer, military and wireless applications. We also have built a number of test systems that integrate different combinations of analog, digital, RF, optical and sensor components in a single package. For example, Motorola, which was one of the Packaging Research Center's founding partners, uses parts of SOP technology in two models of its GSM/General Packet