We will continue to follow our charter, placing our primary focus on chip-scale, chip-size and flip-chip packages, but we are going to expand our horizons to include areas that support and impact the growth of these infant technologies. As we begin our second year as an independent enterprise, we renew our pledge to give you, our readers, superior, original editorial content in every issue. Of the four or five national magazines you might receive that cover the world of IC packaging, we are the only one based in the heart of Silicon Valley. The next closest, in fact, is nearly 2,000 miles away! Our location represents a great benefit to us and to you. We also believe it invests us with a sacred trust to cover Silicon Valley with a thoroughness that our competitors can't match. Look for more original news and features from Silicon Valley, from the Silicon Desert, the Silicon Tundra and from every center of IC packaging technology throughout the United States, Asia and Europe. In short, we'll cover the technology wherever in the world it takes us to keep you on the leading edge of knowledge. "And now for something completely different," as the British Monty Python troup was fond of saying. Although we led the industry with our reporting on wafer-level packaging, this issue features our first in-depth articles on the use of wafer-steppers and other front-end tools for IC packaging. Growing up in the semiconductor industry, first at Texas Instruments in Dallas, and then at Fairchild Semiconductor and Raytheon in Mountain View, neither I, nor my colleagues, ever suspected that lithography tools would someday play a significant role in IC packaging. Of course, we were wrong. We're beginning to see a definite migration of front-end processes toward the backend. And it's happening so fast, I think we can properly call it a revolution, not simply an evolutionary step. Thanks again for making Chip Scale Review your preferred guide through the incredible shrinking world of semiconductor packaging. Please stay with us as we road map the amazing present and future course of chip-scale electronics. Sincerely,
Gene Selven,
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