All: some news items concerning Rambus, I believe they have not been posted earlier:
1.
March 23, 1998, TechWeb News
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Array packaging: sizing up the future
By Charles L. Lassen and Brandon Prior, Prismark Partners LLC, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.
As array packaging proliferates, the market profile for the various types is beginning to emerge. Though some say it is too early to call a winning technology, both the market momentum and the technology fundamentals are producing a clear pattern. Last year, out of the 204 million ball-grid arrays (BGAs) manufactured, 70 percent were fabricated using double-sided rigid plastic headers, 12 percent multilayer rigid plastic headers, 10 percent ceramic headers and only 8 percent film or tape headers (the majority of these were constructions of single-metal-layer tape)
In stark contrast, global chip-scale package (CSP) production of 35 million units has been profiled by analysts as 60 percent film-based using wire bonding, 9 percent ceramic, 7 percent flip-chip on rigid, 4 percent TAB tape and a small number of wire-bond rigid two-sided plastic headers.
Why this sharp contrast between the high usage of film-based product in CSPs and the high usage of rigid printed-circuit-board headers in BGAs? There are two reasons: one physical and the other economic. Polyimide-based film circuits generally sell for twice as much as the equivalent rigid or thin-rigid pc board on a cents-per-area basis. This has been historically true of TAB and fine-line flex circuits. Film-based circuits do, however, provide higher density. Vias tend to be smaller and can be etched rather than drilled, line widths can be produced at higher yields in finer dimensions because of thinner copper and smoother glass-reinforced surfaces.
For CSPs, film-based headers make great sense. They are small in area (die size) and thus cost little while providing the density needed on one or two metal layers. Not surprisingly, film-based headers account for more than 60 percent of CSP platforms. But in BGAs the header area is substantially greater than the die area; what's more, expensive film-based real estate requires stiffeners for physical reinforcement and therefore is expensive compared with rigid plastic pc-board headers. So rigid plastic headers dominate in BGAs.
In a global-array packaging price survey, Prismark found that the fully assembled cost of a film-based BGA is typically 30 percent higher than the equivalent rigid plastic one, 2 cents per ball vs. 1.5 cents per ball based on 400-I/O devices at quantities of 100,000 per month. In contrast, CSP pricing for wire-bonded film-based devices in the 100-to-200-I/O range is 1.3 cents per ball. However, the price benchmark here is SOP packaging, which comes in at 0.7 cent to 0.8 cent per lead. Tessera packages, which are also film-based, are produced in such low volume that their price is inevitably much higher, coming in at just under 3 cents per ball. The cost of these packages may fall as volume builds for such premium applications as Rambus modules, which use Tessera packaged parts today. But they may be vulnerable to lower-cost alternatives even in high-performance apps.
Some forecasters believe that today's array-packaging landscape heralds a future in which film-based packages dominate. We do not. As array packaging grows, price benchmarks will become more important in determining the technology used. Low-lead-count CSP packaging will have as its price benchmark SOP packaging, which in a few years will be hitting 0.5 to 0.6 cent per lead. There are two technologies now that can approach these numbers: the packaging technology used in smart cards and the redistributed flip-chip. Nearly 1 billion smart cards are manufactured with thin rigid technology-glass-reinforced epoxy substrate headers. This is the package with the smallest form factor and lowest cost on the market today. Flip-chip costs are approaching, or are equal to, those of SOP packaging. The future of CSP packaging lies in the minimal use of the most mature technology. That means flip-chip, either separately or in combination with thin rigid pc boards.
For higher-lead-count BGA packages, the case is different. Double-sided and multilayer rigid pc-board headers account for a majority of packages today. Rigid substrates provide a relatively seamless transition into multilayer structures. At a raw substrate level, film-grid array substrates are more than twice as expensive as simple plastic BGAs, a differential that has continued to widen over the last 18 months as PBGA volumes have accelerated relative to film BGA solutions.
Two other factors must be considered for future array packages: the rapid reduction in the cost per bump of flip-chip and the move away from lead-frame-based cassette-handled substrates. The cost of processing a bumped wafer is continually driven and is now as low as $75 for a 150-mm wafer. It may fall below $50 per 200-mm wafer as electroless nickel and new solder application techniques come online. The number of yielded bumps per wafer is also rapidly rising as die size remains relatively constant and pin count continues its inexorable rise. The net effect of cost reduction per bumped wafer and many more bumps per wafer is fast producing an unbeatable cost per bump when compared to wire bonding. Wire bonding is mature and relatively cost inelastic. A flip-chip/wire-bond crossover price point is near at hand. The net effect is that flip-chip will proliferate.
The second factor is the use of large square or rectangular substrates with many more dice per substrate and much higher substrate area utilization compared to today's cassette-handling-constrained substrates. Only when new handling equipment is needed will contract assemblers move from cassettes, whose form factor is dictated by traditional lead frame/wire-bond/mold practice, and move to well-utilized large-area substrates with a flip-chip interface. At that time, the transition to array packaging will be complete and it will become settled for the next decade or so as clarity will have emerged from today's confusion. Array packaging will be minimalist. It will be DCA flip-chip based on standard pitches for low-lead-count devices and flip-chip on thin rigid pc board for higher lead counts. The economic drivers in the marketplace and the enabling technologies that array packaging has encouraged will have coalesced to deliver only those minimalist packaging functions that are absolutely necessary: protection and access on a standard grid. Array packaging today is well on the way to eliminating itself, at least those aspects that add no value. Only minimalist fundamentals will remain.
The underfilled CSPs and the attempts to address TCE mismatches with compliant materials will be as quaint as the first attempts to improve SOP reliability with beads of elastomer over the soldered leads and the many attempts to obtain reliable joints with leadless ceramic carriers on modified printed-circuit constructions of the early 1980s. The future of array packaging belongs to flip-chip on thin rigid substrates-the lowest-cost solution that addresses the full range of lead counts from three to 3,000.
You can reach this article directly here: techweb.com
2.
March 23, 1998, TechWeb News
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New graphics companies focus on licensing cores that process polygons -- Startups add new dimensions to 3-D game
By Ron Wilson
San Jose, Calif. - Beginning with an announcement by Stellar Semiconductor Inc. today, a new generation of chips and synthesizable 3-D cores will charge head-on into the high-end personal-computer graphics market. The new parts, coming from startup companies with no baggage to hold them to conventional architectures, is changing the way 3-D chips are designed-putting less stress on pixel rendering and much more emphasis on choosing which pixels to render. And, circumventing the traditional barriers to entry in the graphics business, the new players are concentrating on core licensing rather than on building chips.
But the main driver is bang for the buck. "The memory requirements and memory-bandwidth needs for conventional 3-D algorithms are essentially unbounded," warned Sandeep Gupta, chief executive officer of new venture Stellar Semiconductor, here. Rendering a complex, very high-resolution image can "consume 14 Gbytes/s of memory bandwidth-more than 10 Rambus channels," Gupta said. "And you need a huge amount of local memory. That's just unsupportable in a consumer pricing environment, such as in set-top boxes or sub-$1,000 PCs."
You can reach this article directly here:
techweb.com
3.
Quick Fixes: Hardware, software solutions make systems DVD-ready -- STB Tackles Issue Of DVD-ROM Integration
By Joseph F. Kovar
Richardson, Texas -- While wide-scale integration of DVD-ROM drives in place of CD-ROM drives may be slowed for now by cost considerations, systems integrators already can make systems DVD-ROM-ready by using new hardware and software solutions.
One such solution is from STB Systems Inc., which started shipping an Accelerated Graphics Port 2-D/3-D graphics accelerator with an onboard DVD hardware solution. The product specifically targets integrators selling into the sub-$1,000 PC market.
The company's Nitro DVD is built around the Mpact 2 media processor with Mpact Mediaware for 3DVD from Chromatic Research Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif.
STB, based here, is not pushing the Nitro DVD as the fastest card, said P.T. Barnum, the company's advanced technology support engineer. "Its 2-D performance and 3-D performance are good," said Barnum. "But what's important is that it includes hardware DVD for free."
Most hardware DVD solutions, he said, require a separate card, which takes an extra mainboard slot and adds to the cost of the system. The STB board "allows guys in the sub-$1,000 market to add DVD," he said.
The Nitro DVD delivers full-motion hardware DVD decode and playback at up to 30 frames per second, as well as Dolby Digital audio-decoding using SRS TruSurround.
The Nitro DVD can support 4 Mbytes or 8 Mbytes of concurrent Rambus DRAM video memory and includes drivers for Windows 95, including full DirectX support and 32-bit Windows 98 support.
The Nitro DVD is available in white box and bulk packaging to systems integrators, VARs and build-to-order assemblers, through distributors such as Tech Data Corp. and Ingram Micro Inc.
Because it is an AGP solution, STB will not target the card at the retail market for now.
You can reach this article directly here:
techweb.com |
