That’s A Wrap: 3D InCites’ Top Stories and Podcast Episodes for 2021

It goes without saying that 2021 was a monumental year for the semiconductor industry, and especially heterogeneous integration. Our industry hit mainstream media like never before, and suddenly the whole world understands the importance of semiconductors in our everyday lives.

At 3D InCites, we spent 2021 covering the topics that meant the most to you, both in our blogs and technical articles, as well as our podcast, which launched in May and has had more than 1800 downloads to date.

Going by our most-read blog posts and most listened to podcast episodes, top of mind for the 3D InCites community was not only how to navigate the chip shortage and supply chain issues amidst explosive demand, but also a growing interest in sustainable semiconductor manufacturing. Onshoring advanced packaging, fan-out packaging, anything surrounding chiplet technology, were also important topics for our readers and listeners.

Additionally, covering “softer” yet equally important topics like recruiting and maintaining the semiconductor workforce, and the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), helped grow our younger readership. With 44% of our readership falling between the ages of 18-34, we are proud to be the go-to resource of important semiconductor information for the rising generation of industry leaders (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Breakdown of 3D InCites audience by age. (Source: Google Analytics)

The 12 Months of Blogging

It’s a little difficult to list the most-read blogs this year, as how long a blog post has been live can change the statistics. In fact, the top performer is STILL a blog post that was published in 2018 entitled, Hybrid Bonding, from Concept to Commercialization. But we still wanted to see which posts topped the charts: Here are 2021’s Top 5:

IFTLE 479: ABF Substrate Shortages; Consolidation Continues – Phil Garrou
IFTLE 454: TSMC Exhibits Packaging Prowess at Virtual ECTC 2020 – Phil Garrou
Another Microelectronics Crisis? The Automotive Chip Shortage and Supply Chains – Dean Freeman
How to Create a Vibrant Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry in the United States – Scott Jeweler
Fan-Out Panel-Level Packaging Takes Off – Evatec AG

We also decided to see which blogs people were most interested in reading each month in 2021:

Month	Title	Author
January	The Importance of Sustainability in Semiconductor Manufacturing	Dean Freeman
February	IFTLE 475: EPTC 2020: IME on Hybrid Bonding Challenges; Latest on Intel	Phil Garrou
March	IFTLE 479: ABF Substrate Shortages; Consolidation Continues	Phil Garrou
April	The Electronics Supply Chain: Is it Broken?	Françoise von Trapp
May	IFTLE 486: Morris Chang Expresses Concerns about TSMC Arizona Facility	Phil Garrou
June	IFTLE 487: Yole Développement Reviews the Advanced Packaging Market	Phil Garrou
July	IFTLE 491: IBM Simplifies Si Bridge Technology	Phil Garrou
August	Sustainability in the Semiconductor Fab and Sub-Fab	Dean Freeman
September	IFTLE 496: Intel discusses US Mega-FAB; Google To Build Own ARM-based Processor Chips	Phil Garrou
October	Panel Level Packaging Consortium 2.0 Gains Ground	Françoise von Trapp
November	Electronics Packaging – From Afterthought to Product Differentiator	Steffen Kröhnert

Are You Listening?

We launched our podcast in May of 2021, and we’ve dropped 25 episodes so far. While our general cadence is meant to be twice monthly, in November we partnered with SEMICON West to be the Official Podcast of SEMICON West and ramped that up to weekly and then daily podcasts. Here are the five conversations our listeners tuned into most: