New challenges are increasing the pressure on packaging and assembly analytical resources. These new pressures impact both fault isolation/failure analysis efforts, as well as package development. Real-time X-ray radiography and Scanning Acoustic Microscopy are the primary tools for nondestructive physical failure analysis of packaged IC's. Today's failure analyst requires rapid inspection of packaged devices with finer geometries, stacked dies and thermal solutions, and often at the board level. The capabilities of these techniques will be compared, and technology improvements required to meet these challenges will be discussed.