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CA: Has recycling become part of the actual process, instead of a reactive decision?
BB: From the OEM perspective, it’s a critical and natural piece of the process. They take responsibility for takebacks; that part is firmly in place. Some portion of electronics is beyond the tipping point – gold, for example. I think it’s also with REMs; there is developing infrastructure on a global basis for recycling. On the other hand, much needs to be done in many areas. There are some proposals by research institutes to create market opportunities and demand for certain types of recycled plastics and some kinds of displays. For the tipping point to occur, there needs to be a use. Plastics take up a lot of space in landfill, but there is still more work to be done. The OEMs are much more proactive in promoting and starting the process effectively.
CA: Not much attention is being paid to who is doing the design or build.
BB: I think that’s correct.
CA: In a couple areas like traceability and medical, the word “standards” pops out. Any movement by iNEMI there?
BB: There’s no change to the iNEMI scope and bylaws. We don’t do standards generation ourselves. But the team we have is doing the appropriate engineering to do the recommendations for standards. One of the medical teams is going to work on effectively developing best-known methods for reliability testing capabilities of medical product. From that, we’ll work toward the development of standards. Then we go to a JEITA or an IPC to follow through and develop the standard. 
CA: Under medical, one trend is the digitalization of patient records. That seems more of a software issue than an “electronics” problem.
BB: It made the list as something that’s environmentally developing quite quickly in the medical and health world in general. It’s not an area that iNEMI would focus collaborative R&D on.
CA: With the greater increase in membership, are you positioned to open your own R&D site a la Sematech?
BB: No. Well, we haven’t changed our financial model. To do what Sematech does, we’d have to radically change our dues structure. Their dues are 1% of revenue per year. We have had the same dues structure since 1994, the day iNEMI opened. There’s no intention to change that radically. So, no, we’re not going to have our own R&D facility.
What we do need to get in place is some focused research work in critical areas that will require some public sector funding and some private sector funding. We need to get better organized in taking advantage of public sector funding. We’re getting organized, getting proposals submitted to have collaborative industry backing. We need to get better organized on the private side over the next five years, to where we could take some portion of iNEMI funding and put it toward this.
CA: What does the Roadmap say about substrate technology for 3D packaging?
BB: We’ve chosen complex warpage between the die and substrate, and between the substrate and board. They are affected by materials, design and a lack of appropriate simulation tools. One project is on thin PoP, and another is on BGA. We have a longer-term project on wiring density, the effort to continue to shrink the dimensions of packaging technologies. There was more than a gap in that area; it was a cliff. Below 5-micron technology, there was basically no infrastructure in that area. TSV is one of those critical areas that I think will bubble to the top. There’s been a lot of lab work on TSV within R&D groups at various companies – and, actually, some of the TSV is starting to come to market in some of the memory products – but, really, no infrastructure is in place. Infrastructure meaning design rules, simulation tools, testability, etc. A user of devices with TSV can buy components from three different suppliers, and the results will be different. This is one example of where iNEMI collaborative R&D can make a difference. There are many others.
