East Fishkill, New York–Nov. 13, 2000–A multi-year agreement has been announced between IBM and NTK Technical Ceramics, an Aichi, Japan-based division of NGK Spark Plug Co. Ltd., in which NTK will supply IBM with added capacity for the production of ceramic substrate chip carriers. Together with internal capacity expansions previously announced by IBM, the agreement is expected to more than triple IBM’s supply of packaging substrate by mid-2001.

“IBM has seen an unprecedented increase in demand for its leading-edge ceramic substrate packaging technologies,” says John Acocella, IBM Microelectronics Division’s general manager of interconnect products. “We are driving productivity improvements and capacity expansion at our existing facilities. Now, with additional support from NTK, we’re working to further maximize our ceramic substrate production in order to meet our customers’ needs.”

Under the agreement, NTK will manufacture ceramic chip carriers fabricated with alumina dielectric insulation and metallic conductors. These chip carriers primarily are used in high-performance applications such as networking gear and Web servers that require high I/O density, uniform chip power distribution, improved cooling capability, and high reliability.

“NTK is ramping up ceramic packaging capacity for IBM immediately, using existing facilities,” reports Seiji Haga, executive worldwide vice president NTK/NGK. “In addition, we began construction on a new manufacturing facility in August that is expected to begin production early in the second quarter of 2001. Together with IBM, NTK is committed to providing the high-performance chip packaging solutions needed to support the growth of the e-business environment.”

Terms of the agreement have not yet been disclosed.