Progressive avionics packaging technologies

The author describes technologies that address the packaging, cooling, and interconnect concerns for avionics that are applicable to current aircraft and future weapon platforms, as well as retrofit systems. To meet added functional requirements, electronic devices must shrink to allow more devices on a module and to allow processing/interconnection speeds to increase. This however, produces a tremendous power density. This intensified heat load must be removed so that the components will remain reliable. The various device technologies are creating coefficient-of-thermal-expansion mismatch, thus creating failures. The number of interconnections at the chip and system level must also decrease to increase system reliability. Current and future device technologies are discussed.