We Are Evolving into a Networked Society... Transformed by Personal Electronics Cellular phones, PDAs, palmtops, laptops, MP3 musicplayers, digital cameras...and the list keeps growing. We are evolving into a networked society-a society transformed by personalized electronics, all speaking the same digital language, all able to communicate anytime, anywhere. The resulting consumer demand for these smaller, more functional electronic devices is driving the need for smaller and smaller packages. Chip-scale packages are a critical hinge factor in ensuring a supply of these miniature devices. We at Texas Instruments believe that chip-scale packaging is poised for explosive growth, albeit, the technology is not immune to technical and commercial challenges. The technical challenges are rather obvious: How do you continue to make reliable contact to a semiconductor package that has a 0.5 mm pitch? Just think about it, 0.5 mm is the thickness of your basic mechanical pencil! Not to mention the discontinuity of increasing i/o combined with decreasing form factor.
Today customers are less willing to enter into a lengthy co-development process with a socket supplier. They expect to get a solution when they need it, with 100 percent of the risk taken by the socket supplier. CSPs are being adopted faster then any previous package and, therefore, there is a lack of industry standardization. This presents a unique challenge to socket designers, as each package/application has a slightly different size. It is not economically feasible to invest in tooling for every unique form factor; therefore, socket manufacturers are forced to develop sockets which they believe will satisfy the majority of the industry's requirements. In today's semiconductor market, it seems that there is no longer a "controlled" product introduction, but rather a steep ramp and sharp decline, with the total product life-cycles getting shorter and shorter. As a supplier of sockets, the ability to transition seamlessly from product development to high- volume-manufacturing is a must. If you miss the initial ramp, you cannot make a return on your investment. A globally deployed supply chain, as well as flexible manufacturing sites throughout the world, are vital to ensure that you are delivering value to both your customers and your shareholders. Fortunately, these challenges are being met by companies, like TI, who are committed to the vision of a networked society, and the chip-scale burn-in test socket infrastructure is well on its way to being implemented in high volume throughout the world.-Robert Kearney, Vice President, Texas Instruments
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