Interconnection trends and impact on materials.

Rapid technological advances in electronic systems technologies are placing increasingly severe demands on interconnection media. On primary driving force is the evolutionary advance in the scale of integration in silicon with its inherent cost and performance advantages. A second key driving force is the revolutionary development of photonics which is rapidly integrating into most levels of the interconnection hierarchy. The performance of large scale electronic systems will be increasingly dominated and limited by their interconnection environment. To sustain the present rate of growth in the performance of future systems, new technology directions in interconnection will be necessary.