Advanced packaging

Why packaging is now a primary driver of system performance.

What you’ll learn

What 'advanced packaging' groups together
Why it rose in importance
How the pieces fit

Why it matters

As transistor scaling slows, packaging is where much of the gains now come from.

Explanation

Advanced packaging is the umbrella for flip-chip, 2.5D, 3D, chiplets, and HBM — techniques that integrate multiple dies with dense, short interconnect. Together they deliver bandwidth, density, and heterogeneity that a single die or traditional package can't.

The industry increasingly treats the package as a system, co-designed with the silicon.

Visual explanation

A single package combining chiplets, an interposer, 3D stacks, and HBM into one system.

Key terminology

Heterogeneous integration: Combining dies of different types/processes in one package.
System-in-package (SiP): A package that integrates a whole subsystem.

Example

A modern accelerator is a package of compute chiplets plus HBM on an interposer — a system, not a chip.

Common mistakes

Watch out for:

Thinking Moore's Law is only about transistors — packaging now carries much of the progress.

Real-world application

Advanced packaging capacity is now a strategic constraint for the whole industry.

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