Unsung Companies Take Center Stage, Chip Packaging Becomes Single Largest Cost in Chip Assembly-Critical to Cost of Future Consumer Electronics
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>> The world's leading chip packaging companies gather tomorrow (Sept. 14) in San Jose to determine how to help meet consumer demand for smaller, cheaper and more powerful electronic devices such as cell phones, digital cameras, pagers and camcorders. Without smaller packages, miniaturization of electronic devices can't continue.
Industry and academic experts from around the world will attend Chip Scale International '99 September 14-15 at the McEnery Convention Center to discuss the challenges involved in scaling down chip packages to no more than 20 per cent larger than the actual chip size (Chip Scale Packaging).
Chip Scale Packaging (CSP), an evolving technology with 50 different packaging variations, is expected to encase 5 per cent of the world's chips by 2003, according to the industry trade publication, IC Insights. CSP's are most often found in products like memory cards, PC cards, hand-held electronics (like Palm Pilots), cell phones, camcorders and pagers where space and weight savings are important.
''Chipmakers are under pressure from customers to design ever smaller chips for cost-conscious consumer markets and yet deliver better performance,'' explains John Jackson, director of business development/technology for Mountain View, Calif.-based Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), the event sponsor. ''This has caused a revolution in packaging technology.''
Once a simple part of final chip assembly with a single type of package, the growing demand for innovative ways to make chips ready for installation into electronic devices has led to more than 1,000 types of complex packages. The cost of sophisticated packaging equipment and the production facilities needed to produce them is soaring as a result.
With packaging the largest cost in chip assembly, devising more cost-effective packaging is a critical issue for the chip packaging segment of the chip equipment and materials industry, according to Jackson, an expert in material science, wafer processing and electronic packaging.
Among the major packaging companies at Chip Scale International are Kulicke & Soffa Industries (Nasdaq: KLIC - news), ESEC Group (Switzerland) and Amkor Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMKR - news).
Among CSI presentations will be an executive briefing on what's next for chip scale and wafer level packaging:
The keynote speaker will be Rao Tummala, director of the Packaging Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a leading authority in the area of design and construction for chip packaging.
Other experts to make presentations include James Gibbon, Terman Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and Tom Reed, vice president of SEMI.
For more information about Chip Scale International 99, point your Web browser to www.semi.org....<< |
