We rarely read about the link between fabless design houses and advanced packaging issues. Many IC design houses include a small number of designers who focus on their core technology and related markets. For assembly, they rely on their foundry's subcontractors and leave any package development to the sub. In Europe, fabless semiconductor companies are a sizeable reality. 180 European Design Houses According to Future Horizons, a semiconductor research firm in Kent, England, there are about 180 European IC design houses active today (compared to almost 300 noted by Gartner Dataquest in the U.S.). About 20 percent of them develop digital-only products, while almost 50 percent are active at the system-level, mixed-signal or mixed-function spaces. Products in the mixed-signal and mixed-function segments tend to require some sort of advanced packaging, especially in a wireless- or automotive-driven region like Europe. Sooner or later, fabless companies pioneering innovative products will face important packaging challenges. Products requiring innovative packaging include high-speed graphic accelerators, multiple gigabit-per-second transmitters and receiv-ers, smart sensing units for adaptive cruise control/anticollision radars and multimode multiband Rx-Tx switches. And these are only a few examples of high-IP-content products whose performance relies heavily on their physical implementation. When fabless companies decide to bite the bullet and tackle the advanced packaging issues potentially slowing the successful adoption of their products, they are confronted with a number of barriers. The first barrier is the technology impact of a young, rapidly developing industry segment. IC designers are strong innovators, but tend to use old-generation technologies when selecting the package for their products.
The moment these packages run out of steam, the IC designer is forced to switch rapidly from QFPs to wafer-level packaging-not necessarily an easy transition. This transition is why many fabless companies are moving towards outsourcing their package design to independent design centers, especially when a System-in-Pack-age (SiP) approach is needed. Next is the issue of managing the subcontracted services. According to Bryan Lewis, chief analyst of ASIC research for Gartner Dataquest's Semiconductors World-wide Group, "Fabless ASIC companies face a difficult task in coordinating so many outsourced facilities, services and technologies into a cohesive customer offering." Sean Moynagh, founder and GM of Microelectronic Manufacturing Manage-ment Services, a UK-based consulting firm offering outsource manufacturing management, adds, "With some support staff, these IC designers have to support the development of test and the subcontract manufacturing. "This is not a simple process, and it moves valuable design effort to tasks that are neither within their fields of expertise or to tasks that these designers typically do not relish," Moynagh says. Finally, many IC design houses are too small to trigger the interest of the large subcontract assembly foundries. Outsourcing on the Increase Many forecasters predict that the level of outsourcing in the semiconductor industry will increase in the coming years. European IC design houses are now starting to join this trend. Pamela J. Gordon, president of Tech-nology Forecasters, (TFI), Alameda, Calif., quoted by Bernard Levine in the April 15, 2002 issue of Electronic News, contends that "Most electronic product companies can achieve faster product introductions, 5-20 percent savings on material and labor costs and 10 percent reductions in overhead by outsourcing most or all of their products' manufacture, including design assistance through complete build and after-sale services."
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