The Man Companies Call When They Can’t Figure Out Chip Packaging
Jerome Tacier, co-founder of Next Stage Ventures, discusses his 25-year career in semiconductor packaging and his new advisory firm that partners with startups to scale advanced packaging technologies. He emphasizes the importance of breaking down silos between teams and the growing opportunities in panel-level packaging and co-packaged optics.
Summary
Jerome Tacier, a packaging expert with over 25 years of experience, has co-founded Next Stage Ventures with John Abella to help startups and companies scale advanced packaging technologies. The conversation covers his journey from ST Microelectronics, where he worked on BGA and system-in-package innovations, to building a center of excellence in Singapore for embedded wafer-level ball grid array (EWLB) technology. Tacier explains how his company differs from traditional consulting by not just advising but also partnering, executing, and investing in startups. He discusses the evolution from working in silos to integrated approaches that optimize die, package, and system together. In the power electronics domain, he highlights the importance of thermal management and reliable interconnects for automotive applications, particularly with wide bandgap materials like silicon carbide and GaN. Tacier emphasizes that reliability testing must combine multiple stress factors rather than testing them individually. He shares insights about China's rapid advancement in EV and power semiconductor markets, attributing their success to ecosystem development and vertical integration. Looking forward, he identifies panel-level packaging and co-packaged optics as the most significant opportunities, predicting they will be crucial for meeting AI and data center power demands. His leadership philosophy centers on transparency, empowerment, and ensuring teams work toward common goals rather than siloed objectives.
Key Insights
- Jerome argues that companies reach technological ceilings because they work in silos, and breaking down barriers between die, package, and product teams provides much more freedom to optimize and push boundary conditions
- Jerome explains that silo mentality exists because teams work toward group goals rather than common goals, and leadership must push for unified objectives where everyone builds solutions for competitive advantage
- Jerome states that the main differentiation packaging brings to automotive is guaranteeing good thermal paths and reliable interconnects, as many automotive failures happened because interconnects couldn't sustain mission profiles
- Jerome emphasizes that real-world reliability testing requires combined stress testing because products experience power cycling while in vibration and potentially in humidity simultaneously, not just individual stress factors
- Jerome expresses that China has impressed him with their ability to catch up on technology and take leads in some domains, developing ecosystems and application understanding much faster than European or US companies
Topics
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