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To: Maxwell who wrote (8866)	11/10/1997 11:10:00 AM
From: Paul Dieterich	Respond to of 25960

S. Korean fab to get .25 tech from TI: Amkor enters wafer foundry arena, links silicon design with packaging A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc. Story posted at 7:30 a.m. EST/4:30 a.m. PST, 11/10/97 BUCHON, South Korea -- Amkor Technology Inc. today launched its silicon foundry business in a new $1.2 billion wafer fab here, offering semiconductor fabrication along with its existing IC packaging services. U.S.-based Amkor, a subsidiary of Korea's Anam Group, aims to differentiate itself from other silicon foundries by tightly coupling silicon designs with advanced chip packaging. Amkor calls its integrated offering "Silicon-Package Architecture." The new foundry service will use 0.35- and 0.25-micron CMOS technology obtained from Texas Instruments Inc. in a 10-year partnership agreement announced in July 1996. Amkor is now negotiating with TI to extend the technology partnership to 0.18-micron processing technology. To participate in the silicon foundry arena, Amkor has formed a Wafer Fabrication Services unit, headed by Eric Larson, a former executive at Hewlett-Packard Co. Larson had worked at HP for 17 before joining Amkor last December. "The Silicon Package Architecture will offer synergy between Amkor's expertise in packaging and deep sub-micron silicon capability," said John Weekley, vice president of marketing for Amkor Wafer Fabrication Services, who is based in Santa Clara, Calif. "This will enable customers to create superior systems solutions, decrease time-to-market and improve cost and performance tradeoffs." Amkor said it opened order entry for the foundry services today, and in December, the company expects to complete its first process qualification. When the fab is fully operational, it will process 25,000 eight-inch wafers a month. The Buchon site has room for two additional wafer fab facilities. Amkor's coupling of frontend wafer processing and backend packaging services is getting favorable reviews from industry analysts. "Packaging technology is becoming more important today, and Amkor is the leading supplier of packaging services," noted analyst Bill McClean, president of IC Insights Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz. "This [coupling of silicon and packaging designs] comes at the right time because there are many different packaging technologies to consider. Picking the right one is critical, otherwise you could lose the advantages of using an advanced silicon processing technology. There are different methods of doing ball-grid arrays, for example. "Ten years ago, it would have not have made a difference, but today, Amkor could have a real advantage leveraging packaging technology with a foundry service," McClean added. "In addition, Amkor is the largest packaging assembler in the world, and it doesn't hurt to have their attention and benefit from [production] scheduling."