Mergers and acquisitions happen very frequently in the semiconductor industry. However, what it is not common that these kind of operations proceed smoothly, quickly and without hurdles. This is the case of the public takeover of Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) for Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE). Indeed, the company dealing
Read More
With the creeping rise in the price of gold, many microelectronics manufacturing companies have been looking for alternatives to reduce the cost of ball bonding. Recently, the trend has been to look into the use copper wire. However, there are many drawbacks to using copper wire, including the short shelf
Read More
With the increased demand for improved functionality and miniaturization in portable hand-held devices—such as cell phones, PDA, digital cameras and laptop computers—original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and integrated device manufactures (IDMs) have joined forces to ensure enhanced chip performance without sacrificing valuable board real estate. Rather than use conventional single chip
Read More
“The semiconductor industry is facing a new era in which device scaling and cost reduction will not continue on the path they followed for the past few decades, with Moore’s law in its foundation”, asserts Andrej Ivankovic, Technology & Market Analyst, in the Advanced Packaging and Semiconductor Manufacturing team, at Yole Développement
Read More
Lidless BGA package essentially offers one main advantage compared to a heatspreader-BGA packages: better thermal performance. The second advantage of the lidless BGA is lower cost due to the fact that a heatspreader is not used in lidless BGA configuration. This article will cover the thermal properties of the lidless
Read More
Palomar/Hughes started designing and manufacturing wedge bonders in the early 1980s for the aerospace and defense industries. Later, these machines were used for a wider array of applications beyond just military, including medical devices, RF/Wireless packages, automotive sensor systems, and optoelectronic systems and components. Ultrasonic wedge bonding was introduced in the early
Read More