Tom Tarter

Chair, Santa Clara Valley Chapter, CPMT Society

(updated 2004) - Mr. Tom Tarter is a working professional in the area of thermal management and electrical characterization of packaging structures. He spent over 16 years at Advanced Micro Devices (Sunnyvale, CA) in package characterization and left as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff. After a short time as Director of BGA Package Engineering and Design at Advanced Interconnect Technology (Pleasanton, CA) he is now responsible for thermal management, temperature control, and package development at Neo Photonics Corporation (San Jose / Fremont, CA). His knowledge of microelectronic and optical packaging spans this career and he is a noted expert on thermal and electrical characterization of packages, both in the microelectronic and optoelectronic regimes.

Tom has authored or co-authored over 20 published papers and numerous short courses and lectures on thermal and electrical phenomenon in microelectronic packaging and most recently in optoelectronic packaging. He has presented short courses and technical papers at conferences and technical meetings around the world. An invited lecturer and author, he has also lectured at graduate level short courses on micro- and opto-electronic packaging at UC Santa Cruz extension and San Jose State University.

Tom chaired the JEDEC JC15.1 task group on thermal standards for five years, and was general chair of the JC15 thermal and electrical characterization standards group for two years. He was general chair of the semiconductor heat transfer conference SemiTherm XIII, and serves on the executive committee of SemiTherm to date. He is also vice-technical chair for SEMI-International Electronics Manufacturing Technology Conference and is the technical program chair for Wescon 2003.

Tom is currently the chapter chair for the IEEE Silicon Valley Chapter of CPMT. He has worked with the IEEE/CPMT for several years and has an excellent track record of engineering community service. Tom is a member of IEEE and of the local CPMT and LEOS chapters.

He can be reached by email, at ttarter@ieee.org.