Typical visual placement inspection systems in semiconductor or electronics manufacturing industries use only highly-magnified two-dimensional imaging with controlled illumination for high accuracy. However, current semiconductor packaging technology needs more precise manufacturing processes for highly integrated semiconductor packages, in which high-precision alignment between the semiconductor die and the matched substrate is indispensable for successful electronic interconnection. To solve this problem, an advanced visual placement inspection system for 3D stacking of electronic components is proposed; it utilizes 3D profilometry and 2D telecentric optics. In addition to the introduction of the proposed system, the system calibration algorithms and the information processing algorithms for accurate positioning of the semiconductor die, as well as the implemented inspection system are described in detail. To verify the system performance, a series of real experiments on newly developed flip-chip packages for high-performance computing were performed, and the results are analyzed and discussed.