09/16/2010 

A pre-competitive iNEMI R&D project plan, currently under development, will identify approaches capable of meeting wiring density needs for future generations of organic semiconductor packaging substrates. Meeting these future needs will require radical improvements and innovations in all aspects of organic packaging substrate technology.

09/15/2010 

STATS ChipPAC Ltd. opened a new 300mm embedded Wafer-Level Ball Grid Array (eWLB) manufacturing facility, switching over from 200mm technology. The official inauguration was held at STATS ChipPAC's Yishun facility in Singapore with more than 150 local dignitaries, customer representatives, business partners and management participating.

09/13/2010 

PoP packages present some unique rework challenges, such as how to rework an underfilled package; also, these packages are prone to warpage. Inspecting the area array devices can be a challenge. Bob Wettermann, BEST Inc., discusses rework solutions.

09/13/2010 

Freescale will license its redistributed chip packaging technology to Nepes, Korean semiconductor parts and materials specialist. Nepes and Freescale will also collaborate on RCP development.

09/10/2010 

Gartner VP of semiconductor manufacturing research, Jim Walker, notes that, for the first time, 2 SATS companies joined the top 20 capital spenders in 2010. He also predicts solid growth for advanced packaging tooling with memory ATE and copper wire bonders being the top performers. Walker says the conversion to copper wire from gold is a wise move.

09/07/2010 

The IC community has been searching for a manufacturable low-k dielectric which could scale to below K = 2.0, says Dr. Phil Garrou. Microindent photos of uLK 124, released by SBA Materials show a clean ductile indent. SBA reports that their uLK materials can be integrated into existing fab lines using equipment and process flows already in place.

09/07/2010 

Nordson DAGE, a subsidiary of Nordson Corporation (NASDAQ: NDSN) and provider of bond testing technology, introduced Paragon intelligent bond testing software for semiconductor packaging.

09/02/2010 

The 5th annual IeMRC Conference, September 21 in Loughborough, UK, will include 4 sessions: Advanced packaging, Materials processing and assembly, Printed electronics, and EPSRC.

09/01/2010 

KGD (Known Good Die) Packaging and Test Workshop 2010 will focus on semiconductor die products test, assembly, manufacturing, and business issues in the microelectronics industry. Bill Bottoms will keynote, covering deep submicron and 3D integration.

09/01/2010 

Users of WIN's GaAs foundry services can engage in wafer-level and package test in Silicon Valley, CA, and Grenoble, France.

08/31/2010 

Peter Ramm, Fraunhofer EMFT, will be the Opening Speaker at the 7th Annual International Wafer-Level Packaging Conference (IWLPC). Ramm will present "The European 3D Technology Platform for Heterogeneous Systems" at the Kick-Off Reception.

08/30/2010 

Carsem is aggressively expanding its MLP/QFN package manufacturing capacity in Ipoh, Malaysia and Suzhou, China factory locations. This capacity expansion in assembly is matched with an equal proportion of test capacity expansion.

08/26/2010 

Murata purchased 533,000 shares of RF Monolithics Inc. (RFMI) common stock at a small premium over RFM’s recent 30 day volume weighted average price, in a private transaction. RFM and Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd. have entered into a collaboration agreement.

08/25/2010 

The series of workshops focuses on digital signal processing (DSP) system design using Xilinx FPGAs with high-speed data converters. These workshops are being offered to design engineers in North America.

08/24/2010 

Continental Corporation applied economic conveyor and handling modules from IPTE’s EasyLine product portfolio to link its gold and aluminum wire bonding, mounting, and AOI areas.

08/24/2010 

Shipments of “combo” chipsets for mobile devices that gather a variety of connectivity types in one small package are expected to approach 280 million worldwide by the end of 2010. Integrating different radio technologies such as FM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS on a single chip may sometimes involve performance compromises, but saves money, space and power.

08/23/2010 

Sensonor Technologies is developing SAR500, a novel high-precision, low-noise, high-stability, calibrated and compensated digital oscillatory gyroscope with SPI interface housed in a custom-made ceramic package.

08/23/2010 

SiliconBlue Technologies, provider of custom mobile devices for consumer handset applications, debuted two device packages for its iCE65 mobileFPGA family. The iCE65L01 FPGA device with 1,280 logic cells is now offered in a 5x5 mm, 81-ball BGA package with 63 user I/O pins, and the iCE65P04 device with 3,520 logic cells is now offered in a 6x6 mm, 121-ball BGA package with 95 user I/O pins.

08/16/2010 

The IDTechEx report, "Active RFID and Sensor Networks 2011-2021," comprehensively analyzes the technologies, players and markets with detailed 10-year forecasts, including tag numbers, unit prices and interrogator numbers and prices.

08/13/2010 

In this video interview, Sesha Varadarajan, Novellus, says that capacitance issues must be overcome, and the PVD step must provide good enough coverage to properly apply copper. CTE mismatch can also cause issues.