Doug - was flipping through my latest Electronic Engineering Times <g> and found this article. As you have noted the potential for SFLX here is promising, to say the least: "the annual consumption of flip-chips will increase by a factor of five" by 2004 according to the article.
Also note that "flip-chips in all varieties of computers will grow with extraordinary rapidity". Key applications driving the growth of flip chips "include camcorders, high-density memory cards, ASICs, local- area networks and MCMs used in supercomputers, mainframes, servers and high- performance workstations . . . watches, hard disk drives, flat-panel-display drivers, pagers, cellular phones, smart cards, PC cards, automotive electronics and medical applications," according to the report.
SFLX has a flip chip program now being qualified by Western Digital if I recall. So to summarize, we have a company with the technical expertise to make flip chips, a technology that is exploding according to the article, in an electronic outsourcing/manufacturing field that is booming, with no debt and under-utilized capacity, and the stock languishes at levels well below the 52 week high even though it sells at a forward looking PE of 8 or so based on consensus FY98 earnings, with a consensus eps growth rate of 20% for the next 5 years. Compared to competitors, the 5 year growth/PE ratio is one of the highest of the group.
I ask, what is wrong with this picture? Am I the only fool buying this stuff?
Best - Joe
***************************************
Copyright 1997 CMP Publications, Inc.
Electronic Engineering Times
August 18, 1997
Flip-chip use rises, as application base widens
BYLINE: Ashok Bindra
Austin, Texas - Flip-chip technologies continue to gain market momentum, with worldwide consumption expecting to increase severalfold over the next seven years, according to a recent study by TechSearch International Inc., a market-research firm.
The report, "FCIP and Expanding Markets for Flip-Chip," examines the driving forces and future directions for flip-chip technologies and discusses the infrastructure required for their widespread adoption.
TechSearch projects the annual consumption of flip-chips will increase by a factor of five to 2.4 billion units by 2004, compared with just less than 500 million units this year.
Consumer products such as watches, camcorders and cameras have been major consumers of flip-chips to date, but computers, telecom and automotive applications are gearing up to use the emerging bare-chip attachment technology. TechSearch predicts that the use of flip-chips in all varieties of computers will grow with extraordinary rapidity, rising to 40 percent of total package consumption in 2004, up from 7 percent today. The incorporation of flip-chips in automotive and telecom applications is likewise on the rise, the report says.
Watches and other consumer products that demand small form factors will devour more than 50 percent of the flip-chips produced this year, but those products will account for just 13 percent of consumption in the expanded market of 2004, according to the report. Though the percentage will drop, total unit usage in such applications will grow steadily over that time, the study notes.
Flip-chips come in a variety of formats, including flip-chip in a package (FCIP) and flip-chip on board (FCOB). Packages for flip-chip mounting include ceramic pin-grid-arrays, ceramic column grid arrays, ceramic ball-grid arrays (BGAs), and plastic BGAs. Flip-chips also are incorporated into multichip modules (MCMs) and multichip packages. In addition, many chip-size packages (CSPs) use flip-chip techniques.
The real competitive scrap is not between CSPs and flip-chips, but between wire bonding and solder bumps, said Tom Goodman, a senior analyst with TechSearch. Flip-chip mounting in a single package is a significant trend that is affecting the adoption of the technology, Goodman said. FCIP allows a user to incorporate flip-chip-mounted dice into their designs without the testing, assembly, known-good-die or handling issues associated with bare-die products, he said.
FCIPs will grow to represent 27 percent of all flip-chip device shipments in 2004, up from 3 percent today, Goodman said. Key applications driving the growth of FCIPs include camcorders, high-density memory cards, ASICs, local- area networks and MCMs used in supercomputers, mainframes, servers and high- performance workstations. FCOBs, on the other hand, are being driven by watches, hard disk drives, flat-panel-display drivers, pagers, cellular phones, smart cards, PC cards, automotive electronics and medical applications, according to the report.
The study sheds light on three bumping techniques-solder, stud and adhesive- and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of each. The proven solder-based flip-chips that are in volume production today will experience rapid growth in high-end computers until 2004, the report says. By the same token, stud bump-based flip-chips continue to gain share in the consumer world, while flip-chips using adhesives have targeted applications like flat-panel display drivers.
Further expansion of the use of flip-chip technology will require continued infrastructure developments, especially the widespread availability of bumped chips, underfill materials, and low-cost high-density substrates, the report says.
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
|
