Current Issue The International Reference for Chip-Scale Electronics, Flip-Chip Technology, Optoelectronic Interconnection and Wafer-Level Packaging May - June 2002 Email the editor

Mark Bird Contributing Editor

The ink barely dried on the 2001 International Technology Road-map for Semiconductors (ITRS), finished in late December, [http://public.itrs.net] before the 2002 National Elec-tronics Manufacturing Initiative Road-map (NEMI) kicked off in March.

The NEMI Roadmap is created from the North American end user and OEM viewpoints.

To help drive common focus areas, past NEMI Roadmaps from 2000 defined five market applications (emulators): low cost, hand-held, cost-performance, high-performance and harsh environment.

Now, however, the NEMI Roadmap team is refining these emulator definitions for 2002 because these markets are changing so rapidly. The new initial definitions are:

• Automotive and Aerospace Products: The environmental extremes for products in this sector are varied and harsh. Design goals are a useful life up to 20 years.

• Consumer Products: These products include low-cost cell phones, PCs, Internet appliances, PDAs, video games, etc. Design goals are < $500, high technology level and 2-4 years useful life.

• Portable Products: Although manufacturing costs are extremely important, products in the emulator are driven by low weight and small size considerations, but may offer high levels of functionality. Products include 2.5/3.0-G cell phones, wireless PDAs, notebook computers, navigational aids, etc. The useful life of these products is 3-5 years.

• Office Systems Products: These products include low-end servers, telecommunication line cards, high-end PCs and portable computers. Design goals are $1K-$5K, maximized performance and 4-6 years useful life.

• Business System Products: These products include supercomputers, powerful servers, central switching systems and high data transmission rate routers. Design goals are high performance and a useful life up to 20 years.

New NEMI definitions will be locked-in at the end of the Roadmap work in October, and will be the drivers for the IPC and ITRS revisions this year and next.

Continued Breakthroughs

The continued breakthroughs of shrinking die geometries with increased electrical and thermal needs, combined with lower packaging pricing requirements, are challenging the packaging communities to chase the technology trends with an acceptable profit margin.

Market applications for low-cost, hand-held devices and memory comprise more than 90 percent of the total unit volume for assembly and packaging-something that makes the decreases in those areas of the roadmap pricing much more precarious.

The requirements for 2001 and beyond are to remove Pb, Sb, Br and other materials that can be classified "not environmentally friendly." Their removal will also increase material costs by at least 5 to 15 percent above present Roadmap cost projections.

Moreover, pricing pressures have intensified since the overcapacity environment of the 2001 recession-driving market prices down in the low-cost sector by another 20 percent.

These four related factors combine to apply awesome pressure on IC assembly and packaging companies' profit margins.

Next Generation Package Families

At current, very competitive pricing pressures, one question is begging to be answered: "Who can afford to develop the new technologies and materials needed for next-generation package families?"

You might also wonder how the industry will be able to meet the new pricing challenges without price increases. That, of course, is the real challenge facing the assembly and packaging area of the 2002 NEMI Roadmap updates.