The Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap for Aerospace and Defense

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Semiconductor Roadmap History
Most people in the semiconductor industry are familiar with the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), which provided guidance for the industry starting in 1991 (as the National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors). As the benefits of Moore’s Law became more difficult and more expensive to achieve, the organization decided to publish a final version in 2016. The baton was handed to the Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR), with the realization that heterogeneous integration—assembling different types of devices rather than monolithic fabrication—is an important enabler for continued progress in the semiconductor industry.

The aerospace and defense segment of the semiconductor industry has unique needs in terms of technology, security, supply chain, and lifecycle. Heterogeneous integration is a critical technology that intersects all of these challenges, so the HIR organization identified aerospace and defense (A&D) as one of the topics to have a chapter and a technical working group (TWG) that specifically targets the unique requirements of aerospace and defense. The HIR identifies challenges in 5-, 10-, and 15-year horizons and provides guidance on how to meet those challenges. This is, of course, a perpetual work-in-progress and will be updated as capabilities move forward and new requirements arise.

Initial Scope
The initial version of the A&D chapter published in 2019 is focused largely on challenges and requirements for the U.S. Aerospace and Defense Industry. The intent of the HIR is to create a document that provides guidance that is useful to the semiconductor community around the world, so the U.S.-centric viewpoint should be seen as just the starting point for this work. There are certainly many technical challenges that are pervasive throughout the international A&D industry, such as reliability, bandwidth, thermal management, radiation hardening, long product development cycles and lifetime, and supply chain security, so much of the content can be generalized beyond the U.S. aerospace and defense industry. Future revisions of this chapter will reflect that broader scope.

2020 Update
The 2020 updates to the A&D chapter in the 2019 edition include: (1) updates on government-funded heterogeneous integration programs, (2) recent relevant market data, and (3) the 0.1 version of the A&D Roadmap table. 

To read this entire article, which appeared in the October 2020 issue of SMT007 Magazine, click here.

To learn more, read Demmin's interview "The Aerospace and Defense Chapter of the HIR" in October's SMT007 Magazine.