Moore's law meets its match (system-on-package)

This paper describes the system-on-package (SOP) approach to miniaturization developed at the Microsystems Packaging Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Representing a radically different approach to systems, SOP combines IC with micrometer-scale thin film versions of discrete components, and it embeds everything in a new type of package so small that eventually handhelds will become anything from multi- to megafunction devices. It shrinks bulky circuit boards with their many components and makes them nearly disappear. Thus, SOP technology yields far more in system miniaturization than can be expected from Moore's law, which deals only with transistors in ICs.