IEEE Spectrum: Moore's Law Meets Its Match

IEEE Spectrum: Moore's Law Meets Its Match:

"But in many cases, those Moore's Law ICs deal with only 10 percent of the system. The other 90 percent is still there, showing up as an array of bulky discrete passive components—such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, antennas, filters, and switches—interconnected over a printed-circuit board or two. Real miniaturization requires something more, and we have it in the system-on-package (SOP) approach we're pursuing at the Microsystems Packaging Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta. SOP leapfrogs well beyond Moore's Law. It combines ICs 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 anythingfrom multi- to megafunction devices [see illustration, preceding page]. SOP products will be developed not just for wireless communications, computing, and entertainment. Outfitted with sensors, SOPs could be used to detect all manner of substances, toxic and benign, including chemicals in the environment, in food, and in the human body."