Analysis and Comparison of Thermal Performance of Advanced Packaging Technologies for State-of-the-Art Mobile Applications

Steady-state and transient thermal performance of a novel memory-integrated 3D-stacking packaging technology, integrated fan-out package-on-package (InFO_PoP), developed for state-of-the-art mobile applications were experimentally characterized using a specially designed thermal test vehicle. Two competing technologies, flip-chip PoP (FC_PoP) and 3DIC, are also included in this study as the reference for thermal performance benchmark. Direct thermal performance comparison is made possible by the data collected on the comparable FC_PoP thermal test vehicles. Thermal models have been successfully developed to enable further study on the cross-package performance comparison, as well as the impact of various key package design parameters. With the innovative approach replacing the organic substrate with thermally favorable RDL layers, a typical InFO_PoP package has 12% and 17% lower junction-to-ambient thermal resistance than a typical FC_PoP and 3DIC package, respectively. The appealing transient thermal response also makes the InFO_PoP the most competitive 3D packaging technology in high-performance mobile applications. Although the strong thermal interactions between the component packages of a PoP package complicates the thermal analysis, power envelop is proposed and demonstrated as a useful tool for package thermal design optimization. In addition, transient thermal analysis is recommended as a supplementary thermal design approach to the commonly used steady-state thermal analysis.