As highlighted by SIA, advancing semiconductor research is essential to continued innovation in the chip industry. As ever-shrinking semiconductor components face fundamental physical limits, next-gen breakthroughs are unachievable without major advancements. To help address this challenge, Semiconductor Research Corporation (non-profit consortium that focuses on semiconductor technology and education and workforce development) unveiled the Microelectronics and Advanced Packaging (MAPT) Roadmap, which defines critical chip research priorities and technology challenges that must be addressed to support the “seismic shifts” outlined in the Decadal Plan for Semiconductors released by SRC and SIA in January 2021. The Decadal Plan identified five shifts in the industry related to smart sensing, memory and storage, communication, security, and energy-efficient computing. The MAPT Roadmap continues the spirit of the Decadal Plan and discusses how to achieve its system-level goals, outlining the implementation plan for the semiconductor industry. The fundamental research that will transform these obstacles is focused on advanced packaging, 3D integration, electronic design automation, nanoscale manufacturing, new materials, and energy-efficient computing. The MAPT Roadmap is framed around fundamental and practical limits of information and communications technology sustainability: energy sustainability, environmental sustainability, and workforce sustainability.
